


home again

by braille_upon_my_skin



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: 1920s AU, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Modern AU, Period-Typical Racism, Post-Canon, Pre-Femslash, Pre-Slash, Pretentious tomfoolery because the author is awful., Soulmates AU, TGSFanFicFeb2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2019-10-21 03:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17635154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braille_upon_my_skin/pseuds/braille_upon_my_skin
Summary: "Home is any four walls that enclose the right person(s)." - Helen Rowland





	1. potentially lovely, perpetually human

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not certain how many of these prompts I will be able to fill, but I wanted to make at least a small contribution. 
> 
> First up, we have the fill for Day One: First Meeting. 
> 
> The chapter title comes from the Regina Spektor song, "Open".
> 
>    
> \-----
> 
>    
> Featured Pairings: Charity/P.T., P.T./Phillip, Charity/P.T./Phillip, and Charity/Jenny
> 
> Chapter Rating: General Audiences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"She feels a pained twinge in her chest. A lurking phantom of a memory she's fought her hardest to banish. Phineas's eyes luminous, fixed on a vision in white standing center-stage. Crimson hair like fire, lips red as rose petals, a voice… That **voice**."_

 

*

 

 

Charity Barnum is the first to know that her husband has fallen for Phillip Carlyle.

She and Phineas are halves of each other's souls. They know one another's hearts as intimately as they know the lines of each other's faces, and creases of each other's hands. Charity has always known that Phineas's unquenchable thirst for _more_ runs deeper than a surface lust for the material.

Phineas seeks validation. Acceptance. He _needs love_ ; as one so desperately does when their childhood has been deprived of it.

He craves these things in the very marrow of his bones.

Phillip recognizes this craving. Understands it in ways that Charity never truly will, as she cannot share the shame the two men bear- ousted by society and viewed as pariahs, stigmas invisible to her eyes branding their skin.

Charity sees this understanding, this connection forged in flames, in Phineas's eyes when he talks about Phillip. The shine that overtakes those beautiful hazel irises, sets them gleaming bright as the sun.

She feels a pained twinge in her chest. A lurking phantom of a memory she's fought her hardest to banish. Phineas's eyes luminous, fixed on a vision in white standing center-stage. Crimson hair like fire, lips red as rose petals, a voice **…** That _voice_. Awestruck tears gathering on the surface of Phineas's eyes and the wondrous worlds he sees with them, twinkling in the spotlights like stars ready to fall from the sky and pool at the feet of the ethereal being who has so wholly enraptured him. Their daughters just as taken with the sublime creature. And, Charity, herself, swallowed in shadows, eclipsed by the songbird's light.

But, Phillip, though Phineas rushed into certain death for him, has no intention of spiriting Phineas away from their family to heights Charity and her tightrope could never reach. Rather, Phillip becomes a part of it. A fixture in their little world with a pleasant smile and a soft voice. Company to keep as Charity sips her favorite peppermint tea and indulges in a novel that would never capture Phineas's interest.

Her dear Phin, so bored with the typical and mundane.

A part of Charity will always wonder how her Phin has never tired of _her_.

The girls love Phillip as earnestly as Phineas does, asking him to read to them, wanting to show him a new skill they've acquired- Caroline a graceful pirouette or _plié_ ; Helen a mischievous little trick learned from perhaps too many minutes spent shadowing a former thief.

The world Charity and Phineas set out to make has grown in many unexpected, magical ways. And, the glow in Phineas's eyes is no longer a sharp, aching thing. It's soft. It's close to tranquil as a man so bursting with life, fantasy, and vigor can be.

It's _content_.

Phineas twines his fingers with hers as the two of them plus Phillip, their new and permanent addition, share the bed in the master bedroom.

An expanse that felt too large for two is comfortable, full, _perfect_ , with three.

The Swedish Nightingale fades from mind.

 

* * *

 

A knock at the door while everyone else is out for the day perplexes Charity.

Fiery hair and purple velvet outside the windows afflicts her heartbeat with a pained stutter.

Cautiously, she opens the front doors to her family's home, her body between them and grip on the handles barring the phantom full access.

Their world is whole. She won't allow it to be fractured, again.

"Ms. Lind. This is **…** certainly unexpected."

"Mrs. Barnum **…** " Rose petal lips tremble. The songbird's voice quavers. "Pardon my trespass, but I would like to apologize."

The stutter becomes a full-stop. Charity listens, silent save for the pulsing in her chest, and rush in her temples.

"My indiscretions nearly took your husband from you, and **…** "

Jenny Lind is not a woman any would look at and see fragility. She seems untouchable, not quite real or human, like a fabled princess in a high tower with sea foam eyes, porcelain skin, and a figure elegant and lissome. But, fragility is all Charity sees as Jenny stands before her, unsteady hands clasped at her waist, back straight but head bowed, jaw set, yet quivering.

"My intention was _never_ to ruin a family," Jenny says softly, silk accent crumpled, choked by the tears no doubt burning behind her eyes. "I cannot ask your forgiveness. I **…** simply wanted you to know that I am truly sorry for any harm I have caused, and any hurt I have brought you."

Completely unexpected, indeed. Charity's breath catches, her heart uncertain as she regards the Swedish Nightingale. _"Heart of an angel,"_ Phillip had once said. " _She gives most of her earnings to those in need- to widows and orphans"._

Jenny Lind is a songbird with plumage wilted, wings tucked into her sides, incapable of sending her soaring.

Charity can't help but take pity on such a wounded creature, recognizing that a heart so willing to give could never truly have meant to harm. "Ms. Lind--"

" _Jenny_ , please."

"Jenny." Charity's mouth quirks into a small, soft smile. "I believe we've gotten off on the wrong foot."

Jenny's lips twitch and her eyes spark. With something reciprocal, and optimistic. "I believe we have, as well."

"As long as you're still in town, why don't you join us for dinner, some time?"

"I would love that," Jenny says, her voice hushed, breathless as the weight of worlds seems to lift from her shoulders. "Mrs. Barnum--"

"Charity," Charity corrects her gently.

"Charity," Jenny repeats. The sun halos her, streaks of orange flame shimmering in waves of crimson hair. "Thank you." She is graceful and ethereal, but _human_. As human and vulnerable as Phineas without his red and gold ringmaster's coat.

And, maybe as needing of love, too.

Charity thinks of taking Jenny's hands into her own, running her thumbs over delicate knuckles to still their trembling. She considers that, if Phineas found the second half of his soul in Phillip, perhaps she may find hers in eyes green as the sea, and enveloped in the gentle cadences of a lilting soprano.

Her family is happy, but Phineas has taught her that there is always room for a few more good people.

She steps aside and opens the doors wider, letting Jenny in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. beneath my lungs, I feel your thumbs press into my skin again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"It happens in the bath. Phillip is alone. Phillip is floating._
> 
>  
> 
> _Then, Phillip is sinking. Suddenly sinking."_
> 
>  
> 
> Prompt fill for Day Three of TGS Fanfic February: Missing Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A content warning at the preface for allusions to child abuse, and a mildly graphic depiction of drowning. 
> 
> The chapter title was taken from Radical Face's "Welcome Home". 
> 
> \---
> 
> Featured Pairing: Phillip/P.T.
> 
> Chapter Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

 

*

 

 

It happens in the bath.

Bathroom illuminated by soft candlelight and suffused with herbal scents- mint, jasmine, eucalyptus oil; an import from Australia that Phineas paid an amount he was only willing to disclose when his hands were working out the kinks in Phillip's neck- Phillip replaces the page marker and sets his book safely off to the side.

Slowly, he sinks to his ears in bathwater.

Soothing heat permeates his body. Water laps ever so gently against his skin.

He lays there, completely still, mind empty as the rest of the world melts away.

So many stressors and problems become inessential. The strife and violence that pose a daily threat to his family are wiped, for the time being, at least, from the forefront of his thoughts.

Steam fogs, fills the room, muting colors, softening edges.

A dreamy haze coalesces.

Phillip runs his hands through his hair, combing out tangles, rinsing out sweat, sawdust, and Macassar oil that has dried, stiff and caked. The ministrations, soothing in their own right, wash the tension from overworked muscles and sore joints.

It isn't as effective as Phineas's hands. But, then, Phillip supposes, nothing ever will be. Showboat and humbug though he is, the man is, occasionally, able to work genuine magic.

Phillip's eyes glaze and his eyelids lower. Halfway. Then, entirely, falling closed.

Everything is quiet. Even the faint clamor of Phineas hurrying about the kitchen, preparing their supper, seems to recede.

It's dark. Still.

Phillip is alone.

Phillip is floating.

Then, Phillip is sinking. Suddenly sinking. Narrow chest heaving, water splashing into his nose, flooding it, burning. Eyes watering. Arms and legs flailing, thrashing pathetically. He cries out, voice high and pubescent, strained,  _"Father!"_

Every breath is pained- sharp stones in his throat, stabbing his lungs, splitting his breastbone, crushing his diaphragm. His blood ices, panic lancing through his veins. _"Father, please!"_

Laughter echoes, mocking, around him.

A hand seizes his shirt collar, pushes, submerges him, and he coughs, taking in more water. Chokes as he resurfaces, water streaming from his nose, eyes stinging with tears. The hand on his collar hauls him upright and gives him a reprimanding shake, his father's voice, stern and scathing, lambasts, _"God's sake, Phillip. Look at the scene you've made. An embarrassment, as always. Have you no_ ** _shame_** _?"_

Lurching, Phillip resurfaces, his hands scrabbling on porcelain as he fights to right himself, coughs erupting spasmodically from his chest.

"Phillip?" A deep voice inquires. The knob to the bathroom door rattles.

Heart clenching, Phillip fears that it's his father, a specter from his past manifested, having transported him back to the Carlyle estate and prepared to barge in and castigate him with no concern or regard for his privacy. "I'm _indecent_!" He exclaims, desperate, near _petrified_ with fear. His chest shakes with the force of his coughs, and he imagines, _swears_ he can feel water in his lungs, choking him.

Drowning him.

"Phil, what's going in there? It's _me_." The volume of the voice on the other side of the door dials back by considerable decibels; no longer reminiscent of a gruff banshee's cry searing Phillip's skull. "I'm coming in, okay?"

Phillip's strangled gasp must be taken as a "yes".

Panic subsides enough for slivers of mental clarity to reemerge as Phineas's tall form enters the bathroom.

He hurries to Phillip's side and lifts him out of the water, into an upright position. His strength and touch are familiar, recognized by every atom of Phillip's being as life, safety, freedom. _Home_. His large hands a welcome, grounding warmth on Phillip's skin cooling quickly in the gust swept in on his heels. "Darling, what happened?" Phineas asks. Cupping Phillip's face in one hand, he uses the other to gently brush tendrils of sopping hair back, out of Phillip's eyes, and meets them with his own, anxious hazel colored green in the candlelight.

A final cough purged from his system, Phillip is able to rasp, "Nothing. 's fine. I'm fine."

"Phil," Phineas says seriously.

Never harshly, however. Never scolding.

His brows, thick and arched, draw together, lines of concern creasing his forehead. He studies Phillip intently, his eyes always having had a direct window into Phillip's heart, as though the layers of protective tissue, skin, muscle, and bone are pellucid, diaphanous fabric peeled easily away to expose everything malleable, vulnerable, _damaged_ , underneath, until Phillip yields.

"I… recalled something I thought I had repressed. Apparently," Phillip admits, mouth twisting wryly, "it turns out that drink isn't quite as effective a suppressant as I had hoped."

"What was it you remembered?" Phineas near-whispers.

He sees Phillip as fragile. Phillip's misery was what drew Phineas to him, inspired him to whisk this young man already internally exhausted and languishing, vitality drained and aspiration browbeaten out of him by the society he inhabited, away from an existence of suffocating monotony and insufferable appearances to be kept, to a world where the very things that make you "other", "defective", "outcast", and "unwanted", are what make you special, lauded, extraordinary, and _loved_.

Phineas Taylor Barnum sees Phillip Carlyle as fragile, but not "broken", or " _irreparable_ ". And, he accepts even the pieces of Phillip that had to be taped, glued, and sewn back together.

Phillip's heart responds to him, as it always has and always will, drawing the words out of Phillip's mouth. "As a boy, I nearly drowned in the Hudson Bay."

Phillip can feel the shock and dismay strike, a bolt of lightning ripping through his partner.

"Your father…" Phineas starts, baritone wavering, eyes wide, aghast, flooding with torrents of incredulity, concern, anger, and sadness, aching and undulating, almost unbearable to look at.

"He was there, but… " Phillip draws in a breath, stabilizing his faulty respiratory system. "He had no hand in my… error of judgement."

"'Error of…'" Seemingly at a loss, Phineas shakes his head, smoothing Phillip's hair and stroking at his scalp. In his eyes is a desire, burning and vehement, to erase so much of Phillip's past, strike a match and watch it burn away, smudge it out with charcoal and ink, repaint and refurbish it; a fierce resolution to give Phillip a present that overwrites his darkest memories immune to obliteration by even the strongest alcohol.

Phillip wishes he could properly communicate to his partner just how well he has succeeded in the latter. That, no matter how scarred and bruised his formative years have left him, he would change nothing, because every jagged fragment, blow landed, epithet hurled, pronouncement of his worthlessness, injury dealt, and drink downed, bitter and burning all the way, was a brick placed, paving the way to Phineas.

To home.

"Let's finish getting you cleaned up," Phineas murmurs.

Phillip is all too happy to comply, lay himself bare and allow Phineas to take care of him.

Long fingers massage shampoo into his hair, calluses scraping ever so softly against his scalp as they work the lather into the roots. Kisses are pressed to his forehead with particular attention given to the scar that marked Phillip's metamorphosis and emergence from a torn and battered chrysalis, a rebirth heralded by flame and molded by destruction, allowing for new life to rise out of the devastation left behind. 

For Phillip's crumpled wings to unfurl as Phineas's hand enveloped his, and the no longer solemn and beaten showman's grin outshone the sun.

_"Partners."_

Phillip leans into those hands as they dance up and down his neck, kneading at the juncture where the plane of his shoulder begins. He savors the low, melodic hums that resonate in the broad, barrel cavity of Phineas's chest and spark tingles in nerves eager to receive them, sonorous and lilting into his ears, takes comfort in the tip of Phineas's nose nuzzling into patches where his hair is cropped closest to his skin.

Phillip feels Phineas everywhere.

And, that's all he needs to know that he is, indeed, _home_.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. invite tigger for tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Barnum & Carlyle's Circus: The Only Show on Earth Featuring Performers in Hazardous Proximity to Live, Untamed Wild Beasts._"
> 
>  
> 
> Or; The Trials of Pet Ownership.
> 
> The prompt fill for Day Four: Tracks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A double upload! Yay.
> 
> For the title of this chapter, I thought a lyric from Carly Simon's, ["With A Few Good Friends"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrtK1zZ9oiA), would be apt, as Tiggers are known for being rambunctious and a bit messy. 
> 
> This one is dedicated to the mods of the positively wonderful [Ask Barnum](https://askbarnum.tumblr.com/) and [Ask Carlyle](https://askcarlyle.tumblr.com/) blogs. Their content never fails to brighten my day, and I hope that, even once, I can do the same for them. 
> 
> Thank you both so much for the daily blessings that you offer this fandom, and thank you to all of the writers who have made contributions to Fanfic February, thus far. You give me something to look forward to, and I could not be more grateful. ❤️
> 
>  
> 
> \--- 
> 
> Featured Pairing: P.T./Phillip
> 
> Rating: General Audiences

 

*

 

 

"Phin," Phillip's voice calls from the front room.

"What is it, darling?" Lounging on the couch in the sitting room, Phineas flicks idly through the day's paper, skimming another characteristically biting review by his favorite critic.

"Phineas, come look at this." Phillip's inflection is somewhere between irritation and resigned acceptance of his put-upon lot in life.

Hint of a smirk tugging at his lips, Phineas feigns a sigh of a similar nature. "I'm coming." He folds the paper and discards it onto an end table for later reading.

The phrase, "grossly negligent and hazardous proximity to live, untamed wild beasts", is a stand-out that he stashes away, giving himself an internal reminder to inform O'Malley to add it to their advertising as soon as possible.

Barnum & Carlyle's Circus: The Only Show on Earth Featuring Performers in Hazardous Proximity to Live, Untamed Wild Beasts.

If that slogan is not added incentive for the morbidly curious to buy tickets for their show, he isn't sure what is. He has half a mind to thank Bennett for yet more unintended philanthropy.

The sight that awaits Phineas in the foyer does little to deflate his sails.

A frustrated Phillip, strands of hair come loose from his immaculately tamed and styled coiffure, cheeks pink from the cold and exertion, struggling to restrain a massive Irish Wolfhound who pants happily, eyes bright and tongue lolling from her mouth, blissfully indifferent to Phillip's arms wrapped around her chest.

Phineas observes the pair, and his smirk only broadens, amusement buoyant in his chest.

"I see nothing humorous here," Phillip huffs. "Look at the mess she's made."

Sure enough, puddles of assorted sizes litter the floor, reflective in the sunlight and filmy with a mixture of mud and sediment.

And, a squirming, excited Wolfhound's paws are incriminatingly wet.

"I thought you took her out to burn off some of that pent-up energy." Phineas crosses the floor, stepping carefully around the puddles, to stroke his dog's head, playfully rumpling her ears and thick, coarse fur.

"Your dog is a _behemoth_ , Phineas. Tiring her out is near impossible. And-- hey!" Phillip exclaims, indignant, as Ellie's tail begins to wag, thumping against his stomach.  "Don't you reward her!"

"Oh, she didn't mean any harm, did you, girl?" Phineas croons, both hands lavishing attention on the dog.

"Just how B.T. didn't mean any harm when he got sick in the office, the other day?"

Phineas winces at the memory of nearly stepping in the regurgitated mass of slimy hair in full ringmaster regalia, soiling the soles of his boots before a show. It wouldn't be the first time he had stumbled blindly into one of the equally massive, and, if you asked anyone but dear Phillip, blind to the creature's faults, _portly_ feline's… _accidents_. "I suppose that's fair," he concedes, willing to acknowledge that neither animal is devious enough to purposely wreak havoc.

Though, he wouldn't put it past the cat to engage in a bit of not-so-harmless mischief, every now and then. It's all but written into feline DNA to be troublemakers.

"Then, seeing as she _is your dog_ , it's only fair that you clean up after her," Phillip states firmly, accompanied by a pointed raise of his distinct brows.

Phineas's mouth comes open, a reply on the tip of his tongue, right as a plump ball of gray fur dashes past, moving faster than Phineas has ever seen him-- and tracking right through the puddles.

"B.T., no!" Phillip cries out.

It's too little, too late.

Having successfully contributed to the mess, the cat plants himself neatly in the sitting room, innocuously licking one of his front paws.

Phillip and Phineas exchange a glance, and Phillip heaves a sigh of defeat, relinquishing his grip on Ellie and rising to his feet, brushing hair off of his trousers.

"I'll get the towels."

 

 

 

 

 

 


	4. if my heart was a compass, you'd be north

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Soulmates are a certainty, but any person in possession of properly functioning mental faculties would be terribly disappointed to have Phillip as the person linked to them by fate._
> 
> _For reasons beyond the obvious._ "
> 
>  
> 
> Modern AU. Prompt fill for days 9 ("Take me home"), and 14 ("Soulmates").

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been slacking off hardcore with these prompts, and I'm very unhappy with myself for it, especially seeing the incredible, inventive material that the rest of you guys are coming up with. It leaves me feeling woefully inadequate, with a dearth of inspiration eating me away. :(
> 
> That said, this is a plot bunny I've taken in and been nursing for a little while now, and I finally found the inspiration and confidence to release it out into the world. I hope I have handled the subject matter covered within with the care, respect, tact, and sensitivity it deserves. 
> 
> Warning for Implied Child/Emotional Abuse. 
> 
> Title taken from Owl City's sublimely lovely, "If My Heart Was A House". 
> 
>  
> 
> \---
> 
>  
> 
> Featured Pairing: Phillip/P.T. (With a surprise guest appearance by Charles.)
> 
> Chapter Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

 

 

*

 

 

Phillip is skimming his painstakingly tabbed copy of Haruki Murakami's latest novel when he feels his dog, a sturdy German Shepherd, shift into an upright position, giving a light tug on his leash.

Something has captured the animal's attention.

Footsteps approach Phillip. By the sound of them, the owner is wearing dress shoes. Sure on their feet- _his_ feet, Phillip internally amends, catching the unmistakable whiff of men's cologne on the air- a bit on the heavy side, and in a hurry.

Intrigued and mildly annoyed at the interruption, Phillip murmurs, "Sampson, heel."

Obediently, Sampson drops his hackles, sitting still beside the legs of Phillip's chair. Though, he remains at attention, body stiff, warily assessing their not-entirely-unwanted company.

"Can I help you, sir?" Phillip asks when he can hear the man's shallow breaths a few feet away.

"I've found you!" Comes the gasped-out reply.

"Pardon me?" Surreptitiously, Phillip tightens his hold on Sampson's leash, legs readying to push his chair back and leap upright in an instant, if need be. He senses, however, that the stranger means him no immediate harm. They _are_ in a very public cafe, after all, so he remains seated, book still open on the table.

"You…" A breath. The man is winded from his seemingly frantic dash to Phillip's table. "Excuse me, where are my manners?"

His voice is pleasant and dare Phillip say, _enticing_ \- a gently lilting baritone with the slightest hint of gravel, and an accent on specific vowel sounds. Fluttering rush stirring in the vicinity of his stomach, Phillip arches an eyebrow and decides to lend this stranger a bit of his time.

Phillip hears the chair across from his scrape lightly on the floor.

"May I?" His pleasant-voiced company asks.

Phillip nods, reaching for his paper coffee cup and taking a sip. As he does so, he feels a minute pull on his pinkie finger, a tightening of the string that has been tied around it since his birth.

He recalls his father proclaiming a desire to sever the string, and he knows the man would have followed through had long-upheld tradition not prevented him doing so.

Phillip Carlyle was a failure from the moment he came, chest still and heart barely beating, into the world, and decidedly undeserving and unworthy of whoever awaited at the other end of his string.

Which is why he trained himself to ignore the moments when the thread pulled taut. When a tug at his finger attempted to guide him in a specific direction, and an ache, profound, acute, and nearly unbearable, in his chest called out for a person who would never answer.

Soulmates are a certainty, but any person in possession of properly functioning mental faculties would be terribly disappointed to have Phillip as the person linked to them by fate.

For reasons beyond the obvious.

"My name is Phineas Taylor Barnum."

"Three names," Phillip muses, a smirk playing on his lips. "Am I making the acquaintance of a serial killer?"

He hears a chuckle from the man, and fondness swells in his chest.

At least his unexpected caller has a sense of humor.

"I doubt a serial killer would be willing to admit to such an interest in public."

"Unless he's particularly stupid and wants to get caught." Phillip lowers his cup and leans over to absently ruffle the thick fur between Sampson's shoulder blades.

"Sharp-witted," the man appraises with a thoughtful hum.

Phillip forces himself to pay no mind to the blush rising in his cheeks at the compliment. Wit is one of the scant few attributes he has to his name that he would consider anything other than an innate deficiency. Anything more than a burden. "What can I do for you, Mr. Barnum?"

"You feel this, don't you?" Barnum asks with a quiet intensity that magnifies the sensations in Phillip's stomach.

Cotton mouthed, and not from his coffee, Phillip finds himself unable to ask for clarification. Then, he feels it.

The tug at his finger he's willfully disregarded for two decades.

Shockwaves erupting in his chest, Phillip recognizes a faint rustling across from him- indicative of who is pulling at, _on the opposite end of_ his string.

Tears spring to his eyes. At last. At long, long--

"I've been searching for you for years." Barnum- _Phineas_ sounds every bit as overcome as Phillip feels. World having shifted, magnetic poles askew.

"H-How-- ?" Phillip croaks.

_How did you find me? How is this, how can this_ **_possibly_ ** _be_ **_real_ ** _?_

"That doesn't matter," Phineas shushes him with a tenderness to his voice that pacifies the terrible ache in Phillip's core.

The drone of conversation around them fades to white noise. With a trembling hand, Phillip's fingers twitch, flex, wanting to…

He swallows, unsure how to ask. Afraid to, his father's reminders a pounding roar in his skull and a knot in his throat.

"It's okay," Phineas answers the question unspoken. "Go ahead. _Please_."

That one word, the almost desperate way he says it, proof that he truly has been searching and searching for Phillip who knows how long, how far and how great of a distance their length of thread spanned, slides something into place.

Sampson shifts again, looking to Phillip; intent on doing his job and ensuring that his master is well.

Phillip offers him the smallest assurance, a whisper of, "It's okay, boy. It's okay."

The second utterance is more for his own sake than his very capable dog's.

Entire body quaking, Phillip reaches across the table and feels for Phineas's face. Timorously, as if touching delicate glass, he runs his fingers over cheekbones, the slight bumps of eyes behind soft lids that close for protection as he roams up them, wispy eyelashes, the smooth hairs of thick brows that he follows the arches of. He explores the straight bridge of a downturning nose and the lines of thin lips, feels the sandpaper scrape of a fine layer of stubble on a curved chin and jaw.

"What color are your eyes?" He asks- the final piece of information needed to complete his mental picture of the face of his…

_Soulmate._

The power of the word snatches the breath from his lungs.

"Hazel," Phineas breathes, voice rasping with awe. "Yours?"

"Blue," Phillip answers unsteadily. He's unsure of the shade, but his mother once told him that they were strange. Unnerving in their ability to pierce through a person without looking at them directly.

His father has always hated his eyes. 

"May I see them?"

It isn't the first time he's heard the question, but it's the first time it has had such significance.

Slowly withdrawing his hand, chest pained as he leaves the warmth of Phineas's skin, Phillip takes hold of his glasses and carefully slides them off of his face.

He waits for a startled gasp, breath bated, heartbeat on pause. A comment on how eerie his sightless eyes are, queries about whether or not he's wearing colored contact lenses.

Phineas simply says, sincerely, reverently, " _Beautiful_. My god, you're _gorgeous_."

Phillip's face flares with heat. The canyon carved out inside of him, the ache that tremors in the sediment of its fragile walls and snakes in torrential rivers at its pit, begins to seal, landmasses drawing back together. Like the mythos recounted in Plato's _Symposium_ , he has been reunited with his second half.

Two heads, four arms. Two hearts.

His learned cynicism evaporates, condensation rising to collect in his eyes. He moves to wipe the tears away, but Phineas beats him to it, a light brush of a callused finger against Phillip's lower lash line. "I… can't believe you--" Phillip begins.

"Okay, boys," a third voice, masculine and coming from somewhere nearer to the ground, beneath the height of the table, cuts in. "As much as my other customers are enjoying the show, I'd appreciate it if you don't start sucking face on one of my tables."

Phillip hears the now familiar sound of Phineas's chuckle.

"Are you sure? It might liven things up in here."

"Positive," the new voice, that of the cafe's owner, Phillip presumes, quips. "If you and lover boy, here, wanna get cozy with each other, you can kindly get a room. _Somewhere else_."

The specification isn't necessary.

Phillip places his glasses back on his face, bridge and pads sitting neatly on the bridge of his nose, and closes his book, tucking it under his arm as he stands.

Sampson rises with him, faithfully waiting at Phillip's side for a signal.

Phillip's questing hand finds his cup of coffee much closer than anticipated, and he shoots the space beside him that he feels Phineas occupying a curious look.

"I'll…" A clearing of a throat. "I can handle this for you," Phineas offers. Hesitant, as if afraid of treading on Phillip's toes.

Chastisement and insistence on his own competence dissipate before they reach the back of Phillip's tongue. He lets himself smile, instead. "Thank you." He takes hold of his cane and, giving a short, soft whistle to signal Sampson, he falls into step with Phineas.

The bell atop the door dings as they exit the cafe and reemerge to the wintry air of Manhattan's city streets.

One arm feels the steady tug of a fit and healthy German Shepherd trotting at an even pace on the end of his leash.

The other gravitates toward Phineas, elbows brushing, the gentle vibrations running down the length of their connective thread a comfort, warm cloth swathing Phillip's heart.

"You know, I never got your name," Phineas says.

The persistency of his blush has Phillip feeling a bit like a virginal maiden, and he's grateful he cannot see himself. Proper social etiquette is something that both of them will have to work on, it seems. "It's Phillip. Carlyle."

"Phillip." The name rolls off of Phineas's tongue with a musical quality Phillip never thought it possible to give to two, plain syllables.

He's closer, their shoulders just touching with every step.

"Are you sure you're prepared for this?" Phillip asks. "I… come with a lot of baggage."

"Phillip." He hears the smile in Phineas's voice and realizes that he's already half in love with the man. And, isn't nearly as petrified by that revelation as he should be. "I've had forty-six years to prepare for this."

An older man. Another unprecedented development, but not one that Phillip is opposed to.

His mind fills with visions of rainy days spent with his head against Phineas's chest, feet resting in his lap, listening to audio books and vinyl records while sipping coffee and red wine. Of having someone other than his internal monologue to engage with while he takes Sampson for walks through Central Park. Of cold nights made easier, better, safe with the warm bulk of another body to cuddle into. One that can actually hug him back.

Smiling as he listens to Phineas describing the exact shade, cut, and style of a female passerby's winter attire with admirable linguistic command, Phillip lets himself be led wherever Phineas means to take him, unafraid of Zeus splitting them apart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. in you and i, there's a new land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Compassion and healing are not extended to Phineas Taylor Barnum and Jenny Lind by kneeling before religious iconography in church pews, or whispering prayers into the pages of an open Bible."_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> \- -
> 
>  
> 
> Continuation of the events of the first chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt-fill for Day 26: "Sanctuary". 
> 
> The title of this chapter is a lyric from Utada Hikaru's "Sanctuary". A bit on the nose, yeah, but that's to be expected of me. 
> 
> The pets mentioned are Ellie the dog and B.T. the cat, who made a previous appearance in chapter three, and are the creations of the [Ask Barnum](https://askbarnum.tumblr.com/) and [Ask Carlyle](https://askcarlyle.tumblr.com/) Tumblr blogs. 
> 
> \---
> 
> Featured Pairings: P.T./Phillip, P.T./Charity, Charity/Jenny, and implied Charity/P.T./Phillip
> 
> Chapter Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
> 
> No content warnings apply.

 

*

 

 

Churches have never offered sanctity to Phineas Taylor Barnum.

As a child left to care for himself in a bleak, cruel, callous, and indifferent world, he dared not seek refuge inside modest chapels or grand cathedrals; intimidated by the towering statues of Biblical figures, sharp spires, stark white crosses, and gruesome images of crucifixions. And, perhaps resentful of a God who took both of his parents away when he needed them most.

His marriage to dear Charity, his lifelong friend, love, beacon, and guiding star, was not ordained by a priest, as her father forbade it, and neither of their girls were baptized. Though Phineas and Charity certainly blessed their little hearts, souls, ten fingers and toes, and tremendously wonderful existences at least a thousand times over.

Shelter and safe haven for Phineas have always been the sprawling countryside manor he worked twenty-five years to gift to Charity; a relic of their dream-filled childhood, and a home at last befitting the life- one of riches and magic beyond imagination- Phineas's family deserved.

Freedom and oasis come in the form of a brightly lit ring, lined with sand and sawdust to kick up in dramatic clouds, and filled to bursting with the convention-disrupting vitality of a dozen performers in a rainbow of colors dazzling crowds with spectacular, death-defying feats, and physical traits beautiful in their abnormality. Even _if_ _slightly_ embellished. And, Phineas, himself, at the head of it all- a true showman, crimson coat, golden trappings, and sable hat and breeches glowing, heart soaring in tandem with his voice.

Affection and recognition, adoration that he has craved with every fibre of his soul, unconditional _acceptance_ of who he is and where he came from, anchors to keep him steadfast and sure and prevent his ambition sweeping him out to sea, are given to him and provided by an earthly family greater than he could have dreamed.

One of two faithful, sensible, selfless and pure-hearted partners, two tiny rays of sunshine with small hands and bright eyes and dreams meant to be nourished, a loyal troupe boasting an array of skills as diverse as their sizes and shapes, and a menagerie of magnificent animals including a devoted dog happy to lie at his feet, and a _very_ well-fed cat just as happy to plant its mass wherever it pleases.

Phineas is something he only ever imagined he could be. He is _content._

Which is why the newest addition to the world he and his family have made comes as such a shock.

A painful, jarring one, even for a man as fond of spontaneity as he is.

Returning home from a trip to the zoo with a buoyant and effervescent Caroline and Helen between him and Phillip, Caroline's hand in his, her other hand clutching at Helen's, and Helen clinging to Phillip, to find the second biggest enabler and _reminder_ of his shameful pursuit of fame invited back into his life, sitting across from _his wife_ , brought a cleaver down on Phineas's chest. Disbelief slammed a sledgehammer into his bones, the jolting impact stopping him in his tracks.

His coming to a standstill disrupted the easy chatter between the girls and Phillip, alerting them to the abrupt change in mood, and as all eyes fixed on the intruder, an eerie silence ascended in the home.

Like birds taken flight, startled from their place in the trees by the deafening bang of gunfire.

Jenny Lind in his home. _Their_ home. Their finally stable, at last perfect _home_ , having a pleasant, cordial chat with the woman whose heart she helped Phineas to break.

Phineas was forgiven, "and, frankly, well within your right," Phillip informed him that night, fingers deft and tender in his hair, "for being _distraught_ at the unexpected company".

An emotional response that Phillip, himself, seemed to share in.

To adjust, it took a lot of explaining, from Charity _and_ Miss Lind, lengthy discussion spent establishing boundaries and extrapolating on the profound _oddness_ of the arrangement the Barnum family had fallen so comfortably, inexplicably, into.

And, _time_.

Phineas needed time to forgive Jenny for the kiss she had pulled him into, for the financial ruin she brought upon him and everyone whose well-being he was responsible for, by backing out of the tour.

Jenny needed a fractionally larger portion of time to displace the bitterness and resentment like shards of ice embedded in her heart. Phineas had scorned her. Hurt her. Was careless with her feelings, and every tear she shed for him was another sliver forming, jagged teeth of ice sprouting up to encase the warm, human parts of her and transform them into something ugly, cruel, and unrecognizable.

Luckily, she had Charity's unfailing light to melt the ice and plant budding, beautiful chrysanthemums in the wounds it once infected.

But, most of all, Phineas and Jenny needed time to forgive _themselves_. Jenny for all of the pain she had caused in her blindness. And, Phineas for…

For participating in a selfish chase that came at the cost of abandoning the ones held closest to his heart. The people who had lifted him out of the darkness of poverty and into the bright lights of fame and notoriety, only for him to close the door and leave them enshrouded in the very shadows he had coaxed them from.

For every injury Phillip sustained in the fire that never should have been started. Every scar Phineas showers in affection, lavishes attention on with the utmost care, as if his lips, tongue, and hands could erase them from Phillip's skin.

For betraying Charity. Neglecting his children. Leaving them in the rearview windows of the carriage whisking him off to grander heights, when it was these three dear, precious people he meant to upraise in the first place.

For not listening to Phillip and Charity when they tried so hard to deter him from the path of self-destruction he was brazenly, myopically, headed down.

This forgiveness comes not from a Heavenly Father, or a priest behind a screen in confessional. Goodness knows two such public figures could never be afforded the anonymity.

Compassion and healing are not extended to Phineas Taylor Barnum and Jenny Lind by kneeling before religious iconography in church pews, or whispering prayers into the pages of an open Bible.

They come in the form of warm gazes brimming with affection, gentle hands, and arms spread wide in welcome.

The way children smile when Jenny sings to them, be it inside orphanages, within the striped canvas of the circus tents, or the softly lit walls of Caroline and Helen's bedroom as the two girls are preparing for bed, Charity having tucked them in and kissed their heads, and Phillip and Phineas on standby, armed with stories to be told.

Phineas waking to a large, vaguely feline-shaped lump of fur having somehow squeezed himself into the narrow space between Phineas and Phillip, and the snuffling snores of a sleeping Wolfhound sprawled out on the foot of the bed, ready to stir at a moment's notice when her master slips out of the mess of tangled limbs and rumpled bed sheets.

The correspondence Jenny and Charity share through letters. Jenny's scented with her perfume- something that Phineas teases his wife about until her cheeks pink and she playfully swats him with the dishtowel, splashing soapy water onto his shirt.

Hearty celebrations of successful shows swelling and teeming with jovial laughter, fizzing champagne glasses clinked together, bawdy jokes, and raucous singing, and Jenny Lind admitted into the ragtag-group-turned-chosen-family as if she has been a part of it all along, the ignoble conditions of her birth making her just as much an outcast, and therefore, able to _understand_.

More at home surrounded by a bearded woman, tattooed man, a giant and a tiny general, and two stunning and fearless trapeze artists hated by the world for the color of their skin, than she has ever been in lavish concert halls populated by the snobbery and harsh refinement prime with sneering, gawping disapproval, of the upperclass.

Forgiveness is Caroline and Helen incorporating Phineas in their playtimes as though he never left, and Jenny watching from the sidelines with Phillip, muffling giggles behind her hand, until Phillip is reluctantly pulled into the fray and a symphony of varying notes of laughter fills the spacious Barnum home.

Is Phillip littering reverent kisses over Phineas's own scars, brushing his full lips over the calluses and faded white lines on Phineas's fingers as he looks upon him, brilliant azure eyes veiled by long, feathery black lashes, and hazy with heat and love.

Phineas and Charity continuing to tell each other everything, their partnership the foundation of all that they have established and their hearts still inseparably interlinked, even with new additions taking up residency within the small nooks and crannies that remained unoccupied by their love for each other.

It's loud, chaotic, occasionally messy, unique, magical, and exceedingly, unapologetically _strange_ \- not one iota of holiness to be found.

But, it's his life. And, it's the truest sanctuary that Phineas has ever known.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five down. One to go. I hope to see all of you there. And, thank you for sticking with me. ❤️


	6. i just want to be by your side, if these wings could fly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Your first thought upon meeting this man with such a grand and statistically improbable vision, is that he's a little old to be placing himself in the cockpit of a biplane._
> 
>  
> 
> _Your second thought is that he is somehow, inevitably, going to devastate you."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I lied. 
> 
> _Now_ we have one more chapter to go. 
> 
> This is the long, _**long**_ overdue prompt fill for Day Ten of Fanfic February; "Facing Your Fears", with a nice side of "Whump". 
> 
> The chapter title this time around comes from the lovely, "Wings", by Birdy. 
> 
>  
> 
> \---
> 
> Content Warnings for: Alcohol abuse and self-destructive behavior, mature content, and Second Person POV. I know it's odd and if that isn't your cup of tea, you are more than welcome to sit this one out. I won't hold it against you. 
> 
> Featured Pairing: Phillip/P.T.
> 
> Chapter Rating: Mature

 

*

 

 

Your first thought upon meeting this man with such a grand and statistically improbable vision, is that he's a little old to be placing himself in the cockpit of a biplane.

Your second thought is that this man- tall and strapping, hair dark, untouched by the grays of age and swept back in untidy curls, twinkling hazel eyes shining out from a face smudged with grease and motor oil and crinkling at the edges with the vibrancy of a broad, crooked grin- is somehow, inevitably, going to devastate you.

His large hand clasps yours, giving it a hearty shake, and a jolt of warmth born from the point of contact travels up your arm, splitting into white veins that strike your heart and stomach simultaneously.

"P.T. Barnum," he says, voice deep and enticing, rich like the liquors you've fallen into a habit of imbibing, and colored with the lilt of a faint accent.

Flustered, cheeks flushing with lurid heat, you give your name in return. "Phillip Carlyle."

"Well, Mr. Carlyle… here she is." The man steps back to gesture to his plane, pride flooding his voice, gleaming in his eyes, and apparent and profuse in the way that he stands, hands coming to rest on his hips.

You aren't an expert on aircraft, having studied only a handful of blueprints and diagrams prior to this meeting. But, an inspection of the structure, fins, wings, tailplanes and airfoil, impresses even the most cynical and embittered parts of you.

The parts twisted and corrupted, that answer drink every time it calls to you, that ache tirelessly for something you cannot define and, thus, cannot begin to search for.

"Isn't she beautiful?" Barnum states more than asks.

He has an ego, it seems, and isn't shy about showing it. But, you suppose that an ego is vital as padding from gossip so prolific, it has undoubtedly reached his ears. The adamance that he is doomed to fail. That his plane will never manage to get off the ground.

That he's a loon and a madman, fated to go down in a hail of smoke, fire, and machinery.

"She is," you agree softly. Stricken, suddenly, breathless, stomach tilting with nausea not quite as inexplicable as you'd like it to be.

Your mind fixates on the concept of hamartia.

Barnum's words hardly register, your hands operating on autopilot, taking down notes on the name he has bequeathed upon his beloved aeroplane, the parts used in her construction, and an arranged time for the two of you to next meet, while your mind spirals thousands of miles away, filled with images of tailspins, wings caught fire, and this man and his intoxicating idealism vanishing, wiped forever from the world by his own conceit and human error.

You uncork the whisky, that night, and drink it by the glassful, ruminating on hubris.

A literary device you once found fascinating in its morbidity, its inescapability.

It was comforting to a boy sniveling himself to sleep more often than not, back scored and stinging, his father's words a penetrative fireplace poker and smoke still pouring from the wound to fill every cavity of his mind.

The pompous strung up by their own self-righteousness; punished by the gods for their defiance and hauteur.

Perhaps, a disturbed, wretched part of you would consider, your father would fall victim to such retribution, and you would be freed of his influence, his stern presence darkening your bedroom doorway.

Then, you aged. You grew and matured, and realized the monstrousness of such thoughts. Wishing anyone ill would not change your circumstances. Or alleviate the ache.

Fire flickers, flames lapping and weaving their fatally bewitching dance. You stare past them, into the featureless dark, and hope against the odds that Barnum's wings will carry him far above the disenchantment, the siphonage, suffocation, listlessness, and dreary tedium widespread and abundant on the ground.

 

 

* * *

 

 

You are an avid consumer of the works of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Poe, the Greeks and Romans, Shakespeare, and an occasional bit of Oscar Wilde. _The Picture of Dorian Gray_   is a personal favorite. 

Beautiful and self-destructive men have always been your weakness.

One afternoon, as you arrive for your latest interview, you find Barnum reclining in the warehouse with a copy of H.G. Wells's _The Time Machine_. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, revealing strong forearms that immediately draw your eye, and you swallow, feeling shamefully like a voyeur.

Sharply, you avert your eyes and focus on his face, damningly handsome and therefore, not much of an improvement, as you greet him. "Good afternoon, Mr. Barnum."

"Phillip," he says, unfolding himself from the chair, metal and foldable, you note, which can't be great for his back. Yet, he's unfailingly agile and sprightly for a man of his age, in possession of a youthful zeal that your weighted muscle and bone haven't been able to call their own in eons. "You know there's no need for such formality. You can call me P.T."

His smile is enough encouragement for you to test the name, foreign yet oddly natural, rolling off your tongue with an ease that feels acquired from years of familiarity. "Right. P.T."

P.T.'s grin only seems to intensify, brightening the sterile walls around you in a fashion that the sun would envy. "That's it."

Warmth fills your cheeks, again, and your stomach flutters, tiny somersaults bubbling inside of you. You could chalk the sensation up to Bar- _P.T._ filling a role your father never has. Extending you praise for something so minor is certainly, at least from what you've surmised, Heaven knows not from firsthand experience, an action paternal in nature.

Though, such praise has alternative connotations. Ones that Mr. Wilde was notoriously un-shy about implying, and ones that you, eyes flitting of their own accord to take in the snug cut of P.T.'s trousers, evidently unable to help yourself, battle to keep in the back room of your thoughts.

Literature has always been a fall back for you. A conversation starter. A shield from undesired social interaction. An excuse to dodge invitations to your parents' many soirees boasting illustrious attendees who were just _dying_ to persuade you to take up a more "dignified" line of work. Books an on-hand and readily available method of consequence-free escapism, portals to other worlds and lives far removed from yours printed in ink and awaiting your return with every dog-eared page and crack in their spines.

You resort to that trusty fail-safe, now.

"If I may ask, what earthly work has managed to draw and _keep_ the attention of the ever skyward bound P.T. Barnum?"

P.T.'s lips tilt into a roguish smirk. "No 'earthly' work at all." He holds the book at your eye-level, gesticulating animatedly with it, enlivened and energized.

The hours you've spent in his company have proven to be heady, his presence, equal parts mysticism, enigma, annoyance, and inspiration, is overpowering; treacherously close to a vice you could adopt without realizing the extent of your addiction.

Until it's far too late to escape its hold on you.

"H.G. Wells is a man of the future," P.T. elaborates. "His ideas are not rooted to the ground, or limited by the current achievements of humankind. They reach far beyond that. Just imagine it--" he says with panache and such conviction, priests in the midst of heated sermons would step down from their podiums to listen in rapt awe. "A machine capable of taking a woman or man back, or forward in time to any era he or she can feasibly dream up. What a world it would be if such an invention became a reality in our lifetime. Why, the possibilities for what one could see, one could _do_ , are positively _endless_."

He closes the book with a perfectly timed snap, and uses it to point to you. "Imagine, Phil, getting to see the Great Egyptian Pyramids in their prime."

The nickname is a new and _intriguing_ development.

You decide to humor him. These rhapsodies, though equally grand in scale to the venture you're financing, are harmless. And, you see no reason to quash mere hypotheticals and speculation. Not when it would entail extinguishing the fire in this man's eyes. "Or, the Easter Island heads washing ashore?"

"Yes!" P.T. exclaims. He places the book on the makeshift table the two of you use for lunch, coffee, interviewing purposes, and the occasional shot.

He's picked up on the nerves you have tried your best to conceal, ones that have you unconsciously biting at your thumbnail and twirling your pen between your fingers, and offers you remedies in the form of whisky and a special tea brew he claims to have invented, himself.

Within days, he has obtained insight into the vulnerable, the unsightly, undignified, and _unbecoming_ parts of you that you have never allowed anyone, knowing that rejection was imminent. Your parents have always insisted that these " _tics_ " of yours will draw stares. Whispers. Unfavorable judgment. Will incite inquiries into what is _wrong_ with that Carlyle boy.

A successful author with the world in his hands, and still entrenched and encumbered by his inner demons.

How pathetic.

P.T., however, has yet to cast any judgment. The only outward reaction he had to you tearing your thumbnail off was a perplexed and- discomfiting -concerned furrow of his brow.

You made haste in changing the subject, and he thankfully, clemently, didn't press the issue.

Perhaps he sensed that he would be breaching a sensitive topic. Or, that your pulse had ramped up and your fight or flight responses were within a hairsbreadth of activation.

He has begun to pace, now, fully immersed in the fantasies he's entertaining and restless, unable to stand still. It's a pattern of behavior you've noticed in your prior interactions. His ideas and dreams are so vast, they spill over, his mind, alone, unable to contain them, cascading into the whole of his body and piloting it with their momentum.

He speaks big, but he's just as much a man of action as a man gifted with charisma to spare and a dazzling silver tongue.

"Hell, you could meet any acclaimed writer of the past century and sit down for a chat."

"The sole proviso being that they speak English, of course," you quip, smirking- or maybe, incredible as it is, _smiling_ \- in spite of yourself.

"Ahh." P.T. dismisses your sarcasm with a good-humored nudge of your shoulder.

You feel yourself smile wider, heart alive like it's never been. Swept up by his enthusiasm, a tide that you imagine could overwhelm even the most stalwart fixed structure, you postulate softly, strangely nervous, as if confiding a long-kept secret, "I could visit the Library of Alexandria before its destruction."

"You could do _more_ than visit, Phillip." P.T.'s hand comes down on your shoulder, squeezing it.

It hits you, again, not just how large his hand is, but how strong, and how _warm_. Pleasant, inviting warmth that you can't will yourself to shrug off.

"You could pluck any scroll you wanted," he continues, physical contact, peculiar for men not in direct relation to, or sharing a longtime comradeship with, one another, second nature to him.

A trait that unsettles you. And, a trait that you love.

"As many scrolls as you could carry, right out of that library, and bring them back to our time before any emperor a few dessert rolls short of a picnic brought a torch within a hundred thousand miles of it."

Those dreams… His fanciful imaginings… The pictures he crafts with his impeccably chosen words… He has enraptured you with them. Ensnared you.

And, more than ever before, you are certain of your mutual destruction.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"What are your thoughts on women's suffrage, Phillip?" P.T. has insolubly sensed your entrance into the warehouse without looking up from the blades at the head of his plane that he appears to be making adjustments to.

The question is entirely out of the blue, not even preceded by the courtesy of a greeting, and, brain not quite fully alert and half-somnabulant on your feet, you almost lose your grip on your coffee thermos. "I… believe that every fully matured adult is entitled to the right to vote, as long as they're sufficiently educated on the issues they're voting for," you answer breathlessly.

You recover your hold on the thermos right before it slips through your fingertips. The unexpected jumpstart to your heart has you completely awake, now, any vestiges of exhaustion promptly driven out.

Feet away, you catch sight of the grin that P.T. doesn't bother to hide.

Face hot, you lower your gaze to your feet, resisting the petulant urge to shoot him a glare. "One person's ignorance is a crime that the rest of us suffer for," you add, tartly.

"…'a crime that the rest of us suffer for'," P.T. murmurs to himself.

You take a moment to collect yourself, inhaling through your nose and running a hand through your hair to smooth any strands jostled out of place by your… fumble.

Turning away from his task, P.T. leans around the body of the plane to declare, wrench in hand and brilliant grin spread across his face, "Phil, I like the way you think."

His approval is something you never realized you needed, until you received it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Pen poised over your notepad, you begin. "What inspired you to adopt such a uniquely perilous and improbable aspiration?"

"Excellent choice of adjectives," P.T. replies, lips tilting into what you now know to be his signature playful smirk.

Your lips twitch, wanting to mirror his, but you suppress the amusement burgeoning in your chest. "Answer the question, P.T." Your voice brims with a fondness that intensifies the downpour of corrosive rain showering your stomach.

Uniquely perilous. Hubris. Tempting fate.

P.T. hums, arched brows furrowing. Gradually, a transformation occurs. His eyes, normally so intent, stare into the distance at landscapes and figures you cannot see. His posture, proud and straight-backed, slackens just enough for it to be perceptible. "My grandfather was a first generation immigrant from Germany," he says quietly. "He struggled, for years, to learn English, which meant that the language barrier kept him from finding decent work." A wistful ghost of a smile plays, fleetingly, on his lips. "Thank God he met my grandmother, who taught him enough to get by, and raised my father as an English speaker."

You pause, pen hovering over an incomplete sentence, uncertain just how much of what he's revealing should be recorded. Perhaps all of it, for posterity's sake. In case he intends to write an autobiography someday.

So you have it to remember him when he…

"Unfortunately, my father couldn't break out of the poverty his parents had descended into. He tried- an assortment of odd jobs, here and there. A grocer's assistant. Mucking horse's stalls in the countryside. Even coal-mining."

You swallow, thinking of cave ins, black lung. Part of you wants to intercede, tell P.T. that he doesn't have to finish, that he doesn't need to drudge up painful memories just so you can acquire inspiration for something as piddling as an unfinished manuscript collecting dust in your typewriter. 

But, he goes on, driven, perhaps, by a need to impart the details of his harrowing past on someone.

Though you cannot fathom why he has chosen _you_ : A mere benefactor. An author past his prime without so much as thirty years under his belt.

"Eventually… he had to settle for work in a factory."

Every horror story you've ever heard, every inhumane condition you've ever read, no gory detail spared, in Upton Sinclair's nightmarish expose floods your mind, and your stomach wrenches as if it intends to upheave.

"As soon as I was able to read, write, and follow basic instruction, I was working right there beside him. We needed every penny we could get after my mother passed away."

"P.T.," you breathe more than say, sad and horrified, heart punctured and bleeding, blood trickling in garish rivulets into your tortured stomach.

He acknowledges you, eyes flickering to yours, green and misting with forming tears. "There was an accident, one day. Shortly after my twelfth birthday. 'You're going to be a man, soon', my father told me. 'You'll need to be able to look after yourself'. I…" P.T. swallows, and a malformed, bitter smile pulls at his mouth as the tears well, readying to spill over. 

Oxygen leaves you.

P.T.'s  voice drops, so low, you need to lean in to hear him, even though it's silent enough for the dropping of a pin to be cacophonous. "His arm got caught in the machinery. I did everything I could to pull him free, but…"

"P.T." Throat constricting around sharp gravel behind your Adam's apple, you tell him, "Don't torture yourself. _Please_."

Your words are a rope and he latches onto it, letting it pull him out of the depths he was sinking into. It isn't until he nods, draws in a deep breath that fills the cavity of his breast, eyes focusing firmly in the present, with you, that air likewise returns to your lungs.

Clearing his throat, P.T. resumes, "Flight always fascinated me. When my father…"

Your imagination fills in the gap, and an ache engulfs your chest.

"I knew I wanted to make something of myself. Prove to the world that the Barnums were more than a sorry lot of impoverished immigrants destined for paupers' graves. So, I learned to use my hands, not for another rich man to line his pockets at the expense of the poor, but to work toward a dream. One fantastic, and grand, and destined to make history." Pride in his eyes, once again, he turns to his plane. His vehicle to the stars. 

The aircraft shines under the warehouse lights, boasting a new coat of eye-catching red paint. Its wingspan is nothing to scoff at, and the blades, sleek and freshly polished, seem more than prepared to slice through any wind resistance like butter and jam.

But… the smothering constriction in your throat remains.

You cannot shake the image of smoldering wings, and the blades meant to carry P.T. up and away, halfway around the world, loom over your heart.

A buzz saw poised to drop and rend.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The spluttering of the engine has you on edge. You shift from foot to foot, hoping the nervous action evades P.T.'s notice.

Thankfully, he's distracted with his pilot helmet, affixing the protective goggles over his eyes.

"Everything ready to go?" You shout to be heard over so much mechanical roaring.

He sends you an exaggerated grin and thumbs up, and you chastise the action with an inward shake of your head.

Then, the plane is rolling down the hill, steadily increasing speed, mechanisms working, roar of its motors deafening.

You find yourself crossing your fingers, murmuring under your breath, "come on, come on". Test runs wouldn't ordinarily fill you with this much apprehension.

But, it's _P.T._ , reckless as he is prideful, and this is the first time he has ever, _ever_ attempted take off.

You'd be shocked if you hadn't come to anticipate this sort of behavior. This almost childlike trust in the achievability of the impractical.

He's gaining altitude with momentum and, breath caught, heartbeat a clamor in your throat, you watch the craft lift from the ground exactly as it's supposed to, and take flight.

P.T. _soars_ , maneuvering his plane with ostentatious flair. Hot shot and showboat to the core.

The grin spread wide on your face is unprecedented. The cheer you almost let loose even more so.

P.T. is far less restrained than you. Naturally. His laughter, robust and celebratory, is somehow audible from twenty, thirty, fifty feet in the air.

"Well, I'll be damned," you marvel. Wind ruffles your hair and you lift a hand to shield your eyes from the sun's glare as you track P.T.'s flight patterns. _Maybe_ , a long cordoned off, infinitesimal part of you dares to consider, _he can_ ** _actually_** _pull this off_.

_Maybe_ is a dangerous word. Too full of possibility. Ripe with potential for things to go horribly, irreversibly wrong.

And, cynicism is, if not an old companion whose company offers a strange comfort, than a shield, all the same.

Cynicism can almost, _almost_ silence the naivety of love.

An inevitable love that, as P.T. lands the plane, leaps from the cockpit and rushes to you, his large hands taking your shoulders and jostling them excitedly, ecstatically, eyes glowing and smile iridescent, has made its presence behind your ribs pronounced. And irrefutable.

 

 

* * *

 

 

His take off attracts the attention of every journalist and would-be reporter in the city. Camera lenses are whirring constantly, black spots hovering before your eyes though you do your best to avoid the flashes directly.

Men with bushy mustaches and boys whose faces still sport acne spots and baby fat, alike, surround P.T., pencils flying over their notepads as quickly as questions pour from their mouths.

For not the first time, you're thankful you pursued a far less _invasive_ profession.

And, yet, a peculiar envy swirls within you. This attention may be what P.T. wants, but what right do these men have. These men who seek out information on the latest spectacle like sharks honing in on a drop of blood in the ocean- no regard for any casualties or collateral.

What will they care, what will they _lose_ if P.T.'s flight is unsuccessful? If anything, they stand to _gain_ from his failure, and you can't decide whether to be enraged or sickened by every, "Mr. Barnum", accompanied by the clicking of lens shutters.

P.T. takes it all in stride, answering only the questions he feels warrant an answer, chest seeming to swell as he alternates between showing off his plane, and resting an absent hand on your backside.

Mouth arid, you long for a drink.

And, you long to snatch him by the hand and pull him away. To summon up every rational argument, every desperate emotional appeal that has even a sliver of a chance of convincing him that he's making a mistake.

Of persuading him to stay. On the ground. Safe. With _you_.

The latter desire impels you to actually grab at his jacket sleeve. Senses taking leave, or maybe blaring sirens in your skull, you murmur his name.

His attention swerves from the ego-stroking and bombardment just long enough to meet your eye. "What is it, Phillip?"

_Can we talk? You're a belligerent fool. Damn it, why do you have to gamble with death like this? Why do you care what these people think? You're so much better than them, than_ **_any_ ** _of them. So much better than_ **_me_ ** _, and that's why I…_

All of these arguments, potential outcomes, possibilities, retreat to the back of your throat to wither away in your heart.

"Be careful," you say, instead.

"Of course." His reply is cheerful. Dismissive. Head already hundreds of feet in the air and halfway across the Atlantic.

The last you see of him, that day, the last you might _ever_ see of him, is him beaming, confident and determined and ready, as he poses for countless shuttering cameras before climbing into the cockpit.

His eyes don't seek you out as he flicks switches and turns knobs and dials. He doesn't call out an emotional farewell.

But, your life was never an idyllic novel, anyway- neither Hemingway or Fitzgerald. Even _if_ , just for a moment, when P.T.'s boundless optimism almost reached you, lapped at the fingertips of hands too jaded to plunge in, you could have deluded yourself into believing otherwise.

You have never been a man of prayer, but you become one as the aircraft ascends, makes a show of swooping over the gathered crowd once, twice, before soaring higher and higher until it's a red speck vanishing into the clouds.

_Be safe_ , you repeat. _Come home safe. Come home._ ** _Please_** _, just make it back home._

 

 

* * *

 

 

You have the "privilege" of reading the news in Monday's paper.

Those journalists and reporters, those god damned media _vultures_ , got to know before you did. You. His financier. His friend. The man who _loves_ him.

_They_ got to come up with a headline, to type in bold print for all of New York and the rest of the world to see. To write a bullshit article that doesn't capture any of his magnetism, his charisma, his idealism, his dreams.

That makes no attempt to describe the color of his eyes, or the brilliance of his smile, or the warmth of his hands. Doesn't recount his favorite books or pieces of music.

That is completely impersonal and detached. Cold. _Callous_.

 

**_Local Man's Plane Disappears Over Atlantic_ **

 

A man, a _human being_ , reduced to no more than two words meant to grab the eye.

You squeeze the article, crumple it in your fists, knuckles going white. Bile rises in your throat and the fibres of your heart shred to ribbons over and over, bleeding profusely.

You hear the paper crinkling as your vision blurs.

Choked, derisive, rueful laughter makes its way past your lips as you tear and tear and tear blindly. "Bastards," you say. "Son of a bitch. God damn it. God _damn_ it. Son of a fucking _bitch_."

You don't know if you're cursing the press, or the voyeuristic, merciless gods.

Then, you collapse to your knees in front of your toilet, and puke your guts out until there is nothing left to upheave.

 

 

* * *

 

 

You drink yourself catatonic. You're never without a flask, and have forgone glasses to drink vodka, rum, Scotch, bourbon, and the strongest whisky on the market right from the bottle.

Eating is a chore, and a privilege you no longer deserve.

You haven't left your apartment in over a week, and your sleep is plagued by nightmares of twisted scraps of metal, splintered wood, smoke, fire, burning, broken flesh, spilled blood red as paint, the fearsome might of the ocean claiming the man you love, and his legacy sinking to rot away on the sand-lined sea floor hundreds of fathoms below.

You're certain you're losing your mind; waking with a racing heart, prepared to stumble from your bed and go about your morning routine before you head to the warehouse. To _him_. But, you open your eyes and you're on your couch, and you remember that there is no _him_ to go to, anymore.

When sheer exhaustion overtakes you and you at last doze off, you dream of pulling him from the wreckage of his plane. Of successfully convincing him to stay. Of the sound of his laughter and the warmth of his hand.

Then you awake to emptiness.

Hollowed out.

Nothing.

Despair endless, tempestuous, as the sea.

Your throat tightens, and you long to asphyxiate. For your lungs to shrivel, your trachea and bronchioles to close up. Every beat of your heart, every pump of blood in your veins, longs to peer into his eyes just one more time.

Just one more time.

Just one more time.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The third week of your self-imposed isolation, Anne Wheeler, your editor and dearest friend, comes by the apartment to try to console you, motivate you to eat, to go outside and get some fresh air. _Anything_ but continue to lie there and waste away.

She takes in your state of dishevelment, your bloodshot eyes rimmed by crescent moons so dark, they look like bruises, the collection of bottles amassing on the floor at your feet, the sheets of manuscript strewn everywhere.

Her lower lip quavers as she fixes you in beautiful cinnamon eyes that glitter with unshed tears. "Phillip," she says softly, her voice backed by unwavering resolve.

It's what you've always admired about her. Her ability to keep her head held high, to block out the stares, the whispers, the names spat at her in ugly, face-curdling sneers for having the audacity to hold an esteemed position in society with skin _café au lait_. Soft, elegant, arresting brown.   

"You can't keep doing this. You're going to destroy yourself."

You have no energy to assure her of the contrary. No energy left for deceit.

The only movement you can force from limbs heavy as lead is brushing a finger along the edges of your one photo of him. Precious, precious, precious, because, aside from words and fallible memories, it's all that you have left.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Never_ , you think. Constantly. Unceasingly. A gramophone needle catching on a scratch in a record, causing the same line of song to repeat. _Never, never, never again. I'll never…_ ** _We'll_** _never…_  

Your world has become one of Nevers. Of guilt, blame, and acidic misery eating through you at an agonizingly, excruciatingly, _exasperatingly_ slow pace.

Never have. Never will. Never, never, never.

You crave oblivion, and pray every morning, every night, every _hour_ that it claims you, soon.

It's the only fate befitting Daedalus; a man who enabled another to soar right into the sun.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Fitful sleep has claimed you- a body on the verge of shutdown succumbing at last to exhaustion- when there's a knock at your front door.

"Go to Hell," you inform the intruder in the loudest voice you can manage, raspy with disuse and the burn of alcohol.

The knocks continue, adamant, a battering ram to your aching skull. Untangling your legs from twisted blankets, you stumble off of the couch and to the door. "Didn't you hear me? I said--"

Your bleary eyes take in your unwanted visitor, and speech dissipates instantaneously.

Broad chest. Strong arms. Hazel eyes peering out from a face that you could never, _never_ forget.

The crooked grin offered to you is a dim shadow of its former brilliance, but the grin you know, all the same.

"Is this a dream?" You croak. Dazed and incredulous and not fully awake, yet more alert and aware than you've been in weeks.

"No." The hoarse quality to his voice, his beautiful, sonorous, rumbling voice, matches your own, and weaves shivers into your ligaments.

"You're here." It's a question more than a statement.

"I am." His eyes mist and yours water, tears streaming down your cheeks.

"How can you-- I thought you were--"

"Oh, Phillip," he says. "Phillip, I…" Then, he's embracing you, crushing you against his chest. Solid. Firm. Heartbeat shaky staccato in your ears.

If this is a dream, it might be the cruelest you have ever had.

His hand rubs your back and you manage movement, at last. Lifting your arms, you wrap them around him and twine your fingers into the scratchy material of his vest. Hoping, somehow, that this is enough to prevent him from ever leaving again.

His lips, thin and chapped, press kisses to your messy hair, your forehead, your cheeks, and the fine layer of stubble on your jaw. A new development courtesy of neglect, because there was no point to maintaining appearances. To anything, anymore.

Now….

Daringly, wanting affirmation, tangible proof that can pierce through the haze around your mind, you touch your lips to his throat, and feel his pulse there, the cords of muscle tightening as he swallows, and a sob escapes you.

"You came back."

"I did. I did." He hugs you tighter, cheek resting at your temple as you bury your face in the crook of his neck, breathing in his scent.

Fresh. Clean. Heady cologne and him. _Him_. Your P.T.

You're self-conscious of your own state. Lax hygiene and the stench of sweat and alcohol probably emanating from your pores.

But, he doesn't care. Doesn't stop holding you even as you move to your couch, stepping around empty bottles. He continues to shower your face in kisses, nuzzles your temple and your hair, breathing you in just as you did him.

Your tears soak his shirt and vest and he holds you ever closer. Perhaps wanting proof that he really _is here_ , as well.

" _God_ , I missed you," he breathes.

You nuzzle at the pulse point of his throat, press your mouth to it, cling to him as if your life depends on it, chest shuddering with sobs, hoping with all of your might that, though words for once are failing you, he understands just how much you've missed him, too.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Late that afternoon, after hours spent intertwined with P.T., trading soft kisses and never wanting to leave his embrace, still not quite able to believe that he's truly here and in your arms, you phone Anne.

"He's alive," you relay.

She needs no specification. "Phillip, are you-- "

"Anne." Fresh tears spring to your eyes, your joy almost too much for your body to contain, and you clutch the phone tighter. "He's come _home_."

 

 

* * *

 

 

The two of you agree to let P.T.'s survival and return fly under the press's radar, for now. Anne and her brother, W.D., are the only ones you share the news with, as you know they can keep a secret and have no interest in running to the press with the latest story.

Life begins to return to some semblance of normalcy. You eat, again. You shave and shower, often with him behind you, his long fingers rubbing shampoo into your hair and the lather of fragrant body wash over the expanse of your back.

Bottles are cleaned from your apartment, and under his insistence, you acquiesce to your liquor supply being greatly reduced.

"I'd like your liver to not give out on you," he explains, cheerful tone underscored by a seriousness that only a brush with death can imbue in a man.

You speak of buying a house outside of the city, complete with a white picket fence. Your parents may have cut you off, but, between the two of you, you have just enough to make it happen.

It's unspoken that you and P.T. will be living together. He's hardly left your apartment since the night he returned. And, for once, you can't imagine any other scenario. Any chance of wrathful gods taking the two of you down for your gall.

You have already defied fate and evaded self-destruction, and it's rare that lightning strikes the same place more than once.

 

 

* * *

 

 

On what is, incredibly, your last night in your apartment, he makes love to you. Hot and heavy inside of you, filling you completely. Embracing and enveloping you the entire time.

Your release hits you hard, your body breaking down, splitting apart on a molecular level and coming back together, cells regenerating, skin suturing, all of you healing and repaired under a heated, affection-drenched stare from whisky-colored, earth textured, caramel eyes.

Rapturous tears spill down your face. "Phineas," you whisper, his full, proper name like a prayer, something mystical and powerful beyond articulation, in your mouth.

"Oh, Phillip. Darling. Phillip. _Phillip_ ," he murmurs between ardent and famished, yet achingly tender kisses, voice steeped in reverence.

Your hips rut, convulsing with ecstasy once, twice, before you fall still, lax and weightless, grief leagues behind you.

He spends himself inside of you not long after, buckles, boneless, on top of you. The weight of his solid form is warm, safe, and _real_. Real as anything ever has been. His breath ghosts over your brow as he leans in to touch the tip of his nose to yours, and you cling to the planes of muscle in his back. 

Everything inside of you sings _jouissance_. Pure. Intense.

"I love you," you say carefully, yet unafraid.

"I love you, too. And…" He raises himself on his forearms enough to look into your eyes, conviction flooding intent hazel irises. "I never should have had to leave the ground to realize it."

You stroke the messy waves of his hair, still damp with sweat, and kiss away the self-deprecation in his voice. "Mankind has always wanted to fly," you tell him, tone gentle, loving. "You taught me that he can, because wings are more than a part of a grand machine."

Smile lighting the whole of his face, he leans in to recapture your mouth, and you smile into the kiss, in return.

Damnably, his idealism has finally reached you and seeped into your skin, and it's weaving itself into the walls of the home he built from the ground up in your heart.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Phillip!"

You push your chair out from under your desk with your legs, and lift your fingers from the keys of your typewriter. Rolling your neck- Phineas has a habit of tutting and scolding you for hunching over your desk for too long. He says it's bad for your spine, and he may have a point- and cracking your knuckles, you call back, "What is it, Phin?"

"Phillip, come here!"

The exuberance in his voice persuades you to abandon your station and nearly finished manuscript. You're on the last chapter of your novel: the story of a boy who learned to fly.

Somewhere between weary, wary, and genuinely curious, you meet him in the living room, and let him lead you, ideas and excitement dancing in his eyes, to the storage shed in your backyard.

Bemused, you raise an eyebrow, unsure what it is he wanted to bring to your attention. "You don't have another animal stashed away in there, do you?"

The last time you came out to the shed, you were greeted by the paws and tongue of a hyper Border Collie. The dog's black and white fur was sleek and, apparently, recently groomed, and a bowl of half-eaten kibble mixed with the previous night's turkey and gravy sat in the corner. Since then, you've been dreading finding a horse stowed away, ready to take you by surprise with a keen snuffle as it approached, probing muzzle searching your person for apples and sugar cubes.

"No, no," Phineas, thankfully, chuckles. "Billie is enough, for now."

You sigh fondly, thinking of the medium-sized dog curled up, sleeping, somewhere inside the house, and the black and white hairs on your favorite comforter. A small sacrifice to make for Phineas's happiness. And… a secret part of you loves the dog, too, and is more than content to bury your face in his fur on the odd occasion, or let him rest his head on your stomach while you're lying back, reading in bed.

You never had a pet of your own, growing up, so this is one more joyous thing that P.T. Barnum brought into your life.

"Then what could have possibly warranted you calling me out here? I doubt it was the chipping paint on the shed walls."

Phineas lifts his hands to eye-level, framing the shed and seemingly taking inventory of its dimensions. "It's structurally sound, don't you think? Plenty big enough."

Amused though you are with his antics, you don't have all day to stand here and watch him appraise a shed that came with the land. "Phineas, what are you--"

"Phillip." He turns his full focus on you, crooked and ensnaring grin spreading across his countenance, ambitious sheen glimmering in his eyes. "What do you say to building a time machine?"

It's a ridiculous query. Impractical, impossible. A pointless venture and waste of money.

A vision as grand as making a one-man flight in a hand-fashioned airplane halfway across the world.

Cocking your eyebrows, you meet his eyes, and let a beaming smile overtake your face.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first story written in second person that I've ever written to completion. An achievement that only matters to me, I suppose. 
> 
> Phineas actually attempting to build a time machine was inspired by Schizanthus. Thank you, my dear, for your idealism and ingenuity, and invaluable proofreading skills that most of this fandom would be lost without. ❤️


	7. our mutual coordinates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Phillip is on the cusp of slumber, drowsy and soothed by the balm of Barnum Humbug on his heart, when he feels a hand sneak under the freed hem of his shirt, and pause on the rope of raised tissue it discovers there. Elevated land on a continent yet to be fully explored._
> 
>  
> 
> _Ugly, worn, decaying land._
> 
>  
> 
> _His heartbeat stutters, nauseous._
> 
>  
> 
> _Phineas must have felt him tense, because he murmurs so gently that hot tears sting Phillip's eyes, "Oh, Phillip. You have no idea how strong you are. How achingly, perfectly **beautiful**."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eighty-four years and an eternity later... 
> 
> We have, at long, long, long, long LONG last, the final installment of my contribution to Fanfic February; the prompt-fill for Day Twenty-eight, "Constellations". I'm loathe to keep those of you who have faithfully stuck by me and been so kind and patient despite my infernal hiatuses, waiting any longer. So, without further ado...
> 
> The chapter title and concept of open and coagulated hearts were taken from Björk's "Stonemilker". Which is a gorgeous masterpiece of a song with an equally gorgeous music video to match.
> 
>  
> 
> \---
> 
> Content Warnings for: Heavy allusions to child abuse and trauma, period-typical racism, implied alcohol abuse, and mature content. As always, I advise you to read ahead with caution, and remember that your safety comes first. ❤ 
> 
> Featured Pairing(s): Phillip/P.T., P.T./Charity, and Lettie/Constantine
> 
> Chapter Rating: Mature

 

 

*

 

 

_"Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful parts of us."_

 

_\- David Richo_

 

 

*

 

 

P.T.'s hands are scarred.

It's an observation that shouldn't come as any surprise to Phillip. His mentor is a working man, with a sordid past as a hard laborer, and a controversial present spent pouring volumes of blood, sweat, tears, torn ligaments, tweaked muscles, and reservoirs worth of love into a show he built from the ground up.

Years spent on the railroad, hefting around iron rails and massive planks of wood, fingers enduring the burn of rough, braided rope, skin scored by splinters, scrapes, falls, collisions.

Assaults and injuries in his mystery-clouded youth having left numerous abrasions that one could connect into geographic configurations, mapping out his life story on his epidermis, were they ever so inclined.

No, their existence is no real surprise, but the sight of them, glaring white and pink on tanned skin, unobscured by fine dark hairs and standing out, almost mockingly, on swells of muscle and protuberant veins, never quite ceases to be a shock to the system.

Where Phillip came from, a world of pristine white, of lace, and glinting silver jewelry, pearls and false laughs so as not to stretch the mouth too wide, upright men in suffocating suits, ties knotted too tight and cufflinks clasped painfully snug around the wrist, scars were near unheard of. Blemishes were meant to be concealed; collars pulled up to rest just under the chin, and facial powders caked on in as many layers as needed to temporarily efface the marks from existence. Gloves and long skirts worn as much for ornamentation as for the purpose of hiding disfigurements and deformities that the rest of society would gape at, mouths open and whispers flying about the room.

Scandalous. Terrible. Ghastly.

_Shameful_.

P.T. Barnum, ever reveling in the unconventional, seems to wear his scars with pride.

A pride that has Phillip hot under the collar, and makes him long to run his fingers over every distinct experience and uniquely _Phineas Barnum_ story grafted onto the devastatingly alluring man's skin. 

 

 

* * *

 

Phillip's backside is a haphazard crosshatching of scars. Welts embedded by belts, lashings from canes that tore the sensitive skin open.

His fingers bear the impressions of countless cicatrices. Ruler-crafted tally marks of every time he disappointed his father, incurred the man's arctic, stone-faced wrath, brought shame upon the Carlyle name and its esteemed legacy in the uppermost rungs of the Manhattan elite. 

 Phillip was too short of stature. Too enmeshed in effete sentimentality and useless fantasy. Soft. Weak. Sniveling and sickly. _A pathetic whelp_. A man whose questionable proclivities and persisting bachelorhood were sticks swung at hornets' nests filled with gossipmongers and mudslingers simply waiting for provocation to launch their next campaign of attack.

These biological faults, failings of character, lapses in moral integrity, innately _broken_ pieces of Phillip were, by virtue of their mere existence, crimes deserving of punishment.

Imposed penance delivered in a swift, brutal manner that Phillip's mother always, hesitatingly, assured him was, _"for your own good, dear. You… You forget your place."_

His "place" in the world is something that Phillip is still uncertain of. But, his father's "helpful", _ineffaceable_ reminders of what a Carlyle _should_ be and what Phillip has demonstrably _failed_ to be, time and time again, are Phillip's greatest shame.

No matter how the temperature inside the Barnum Museum rises with a growing number of bodies dancing, writhing, and working in close proximity to one another, with the manual labor that comes with the job- rigging ropes, tending to various species of large animal, exhaustive rehearsals of choreography lasting long into the night despite Charles Stratton's very vocal opposition, moving props and set pieces around, hefting bags of straw, sand, and sawdust to and fro- the perspiration that beads on Phillip's skin and trickles through his clothes, dampening them, Phillip resolutely avoids so much as rolling up his sleeves.

The odd, questioning looks from the men in the circus troupe hardly faze him. He's received far worse. And, far be it from him to begrudge the unfairly maligned and reviled the casting of some benign judgment of their own.

It's _Barnum's_ stare, perceptive, calculating, magnetic, sharp as that of any bird of prey, that Phillip does everything in his power to conceal his shame from. That he most fears delivering a verdict and sentencing. Regarding Phillip as though he is fundamentally, irreversibly _defective_.

Even though Phillip knows, ache resounding in his chest, dismay brewing in the cauldron pit of his stomach, that the disreputable and sensational showman- when his vision is not obscured by indissoluble ambition and reckless pursuits- has been able to see right through Phillip since the night they met. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Anne, Phillip learns, heart sick and unbalanced by the knowledge, has a scar on the back of her head, hidden by a thicket of dark, sweetly-scented silken ringlets.

"She was showing off on the Lyra," W.D. says, observing his sister from afar as she configures her lithe body into elegant poses on the acrobatics bar, her expression placid, detached, the movements second nature to her. Natural as breathing.

"She thought she could outdo her older brother." A wisp of something like a smile tugs at one corner of W.D.'s mouth. "I warned her, 'mama said don't be thickheaded. You know you can't count on anyone in this world but each other, which means don't be tryin' to show each other up'." The suggestion of mirth vanishes as quickly as it appeared. "A group of white boys saw the two of us and came over. They started horsing around and taunting Anne, calling her a 'negro', and asking her if she thought she could fly."

Dread roils in Phillip, rises in a bitter-tasting tide that hits the back of his throat and washes, bilious, into his heart. He swallows hard, afraid to ask what happened next, as Anne drops gracefully to dangle from the bar, long legs holding her aloft.

"They pushed her off the ring." W.D.'s eyes darken, the memory seeping venom into his voice.

Phillip closes his eyes and sees a ghostly approximation of the scene. Hears a helpless cry and mocking laughter that chill his blood.

"She split her head on a rock in the vacant lot behind the house our mother cleaned."

Without looking, Phillip knows that W.D. has stiffened, muscles tight with a fierce blend of long-harbored anger, guilt, and grief over the fate he believes he could have spared his sister. The injustice Anne suffered at the hands of ignorant children conditioned by hate-filled parents to lash out at anyone different, anyone who cannot be molded to fit society's strict, unforgiving norms.

"I would sooner die than allow harm to come to your sister," Phillip says softly. He raises his head, forcing himself to meet gleaming obsidian eyes, pouring every ounce of passionate sincerity in his heart into his gaze.

W.D. studies him, as he did on Phillip's first night at the circus, features stern, impassive. His knuckles sport their own pink abrasions where the layer of dark flesh has been scraped away.

Phillip wonders if it was on the teeth of one of Anne's tormentors.

After a long moment, something in W.D.'s expression shifts, softens so slightly that Phillip could have imagined it. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that." He brushes past Phillip, heading for the ring to reconvene with and assist his sister.

Sometime later, in the evening following another sold-out show, Anne informs Phillip as she unravels the spool of protective cloth coated in chalk and wound around her hand, "Scar tissue toughens the skin." With all of her quiet strength and guarded cynicism, she reveals a glimpse of raised flesh on her palm.

Phillip both wishes the world had never had the opportunity to injure this breathtaking young woman, and admires, and envies, her resilience.

His scars are not an example of fortitude, physical or mental, or proof of his survival. They are weakness branded onto his skin, with no pride or personal growth to show for it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Many weeks later, Phillip will make good on his word and risk his life for Anne.

His newest clusters of scars finally have meaning.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"I was hoping I'd find you here."

Phillip startles as the voice, sonorous thunder, lilting gravel that he could distinguish in a heartbeat amidst a sea of buzzing conversation, rings throughout the main tent, acoustics amplified in its emptiness, and reverberates all the way into his heart. 

He turns to find the master of paradoxes, himself, standing in front of tent flaps still rustling lightly at his backside. The jade of his wool overcoat is striking against the red and gold- colors chosen expressly for their ability to act as a beacon, drawing crowds from all over the city, superseded, muted, and diluted by the mere presence of the man bold enough to claim them for his own. 

The tall, broad-chested, strapping man who now regards Phillip from a distance of no more than five feet away, eyes a shining spectrum of earthy hues.

_Phineas_. Phillip's heart leaps into his throat and lodges behind his uvula, a lump of pressure pushing against his Adam's apple. He risks a smirk, declares, tone light-hearted, teasing, "My apologies, sir, I'm afraid you missed our last show of the evening. But, I can inquire about our box-office clerk reserving a spot in tomorrow's show, for you."

Phineas Taylor Barnum emits a chuckle, choked and strained. Such a far cry from his rich, fruity, and infectious mirth that floods the dockside circus from the tops of its vibrant tents to the straw lining the animals' caravans, that lacerations slash in longitudinal lines across Phillip's heart.

"P.T.?" Phillip inquires softly.

Though a deeply affectionate and often sentimental man, it's rare for his partner to show any traces of vulnerability.

Tonight, Phineas's demeanor is curiously modest, his veneer of endless confidence and pride stripped away to reveal a hesitant and almost diffident mien as he fiddles with the top hat in his hands, subtly rotating the brim in his long fingers.

Perturbation stirs in Phillip's stomach. "Phineas, are you--?"

"I made a mistake, Phillip."

An admission that Phillip and most of the circus troupe would gleefully lord over the former ringmaster, and Phillip feels not an ounce of desire to do so.

Frigid wind whistles through the air outside. Waves break as they splash the distant shoreline.

"And…" Phillip swallows, willing himself to maintain eye-contact, hold the swiftest portal and clearest window to his soul wide open, as if he ever safeguarded and kept it sealed off from Phineas Taylor Barnum, to begin with. "What mistake might that be?"

Phineas glances around the tent, eyes skimming the high rafters and lights strung upon them, the vacant stands. A whisper of a smile tugs at his lips when his gaze passes over a discarded peanut shell that the hired hands must have missed during clean-up. "I keep convincing myself that I need to leave this place in order to be happy. That there's something I'm missing, something _more_ out there, and I will never be satisfied until I can have it as my own."

Phillip listens, familiar dread taking root inside of him. He remembers a conversation, a desperate plea to a Phineas hundreds of miles away while standing within arm's reach. A Phineas who slipped away because Phillip failed to stop him.

Who left everything he had built from the ground up, all of the nothing he had transformed into something _extraordinary_ , his loyal troupe who looked to him for guidance, leadership, and a patriarch to head the home he had given them, the audiences he had attracted by courting scandal and controversy and employing heedless exhibition and calculated deception.

The world of _freedom_ he had promised to show Phillip.

A Phineas who abandoned his family and expected short statured, soft-spoken, weak, and cowardly Phillip, drown everything in bitter amber and meticulously arrange every strand of hair into an immaculately tamed coiffure to present the facade of an accomplished member of the upperclass Phillip, never good enough to appease his father because he is innately, incurably deviant, degenerate, _wrong_ Phillip, to numbly attempt to recreate the unique brand of showmanship that Phineas, alone, has to offer.

But…

Also the Phineas who saved Phillip's life. In more ways than Phillip could ever begin to count.

"I never should have left you," Phineas says.

Phillip's heart drums a syncopated beat, his body pulsing with every off-kilter hit. "You came back," he argues.

Phineas steps closer, discarding his hat on one of the benches in the stands. "Not just then." His eyes are pools of honey and whisky, verdant and cobalt minnows swimming in their depths.

Need for explanation vanishes as Phineas's gravitational pull draws Phillip in, past his orbit and onto his surface, his brilliant light bathing Phillip's skin. He brings his hand to rest on Phillip's face, callused fingers caressing Phillip's cheek, tracing the curve of Phillip's jaw.

Fluttering breaths still in Phillip's lungs. He dares not make a sound, worried that it will shatter something, wake him from the most wonderful dream he's had since flame and destruction claimed dominance of his unconscious mind.

At last, Phineas's fingers find their destination and curl under Phillip's chin, tilting it up, thumb stroking the bow of Phillip's lower lip, honey eyes warm, hungry, devouring. "I belong _here_. With Lettie, Charles, Anne, and all of the others. With _you_."

Heartbeat building to a deafening roar of percussion, limbs trembling, Phillip searches those eyes and finds nothing but honesty. Need and affection raw, naked, and open.

A reflection of everything Phillip has felt since warm, strong, large hands first touched his skin. Feels _now_ in a tidal wave crashing over his head.

It's him who finishes the merger, lets two bodies collide with his fingers tangling in thick waves of hair.

There's nothing but a gentle brushing of lips, at first, soft and timid, but earnest. Then, hands clutch more firmly at clothing, thread into hair until knuckles reach the scalp.

Phillip finds a breathy gasp, surprised and utterly elated, rising out of him, and Phineas lets out a similar sound, amused and affected, against Phillip's mouth.

Hands begin to explore; chests, arms and swells of biceps, trim waists and fabric stretched taut over skin sculpted with muscle. Lips roam down necks and up jawlines, Phillip arching onto the balls of his feet and Phineas bending to compensate for the difference of height between them.

Fingers undo fasteners of clothing, slipping buttons from holes, and Phillip winds his arms around Phineas's neck, breaking the kiss to gasp as a warm hand brushes his newly exposed breastbone. Wanders the slope of a firm pectoral and grazes the nub of a sensitive nipple. "Phineas, _God_ ," he breathes.

Phineas kisses him again, languorous and lingering, fire dancing across Phillip's lips. He separates their mouths with a soft smack that seems to echo throughout the empty tent. His cheeks are flushed, lips kissed-pink, and eyes hooded and hazy with heat, lust, love.

He's beautiful, heartrendingly and breathtakingly so. And, Phillip's heart has never been so full.

"Stay with me," Phillip whispers, walls down and suddenly needing. Warmth, companionship, _Phineas_. Because Phineas is the only one who can understand. Because Phineas was there, charged into the roaring flames of Hell and the heart of death's inferno after Phillip, held Phillip in his arms when the high roof of a million dreams compiled came crashing down.

Phillip touches his nose to Phineas's, wishing fervently that boundaries of clothing and skin and unwritten laws didn't exist. Couldn't keep them apart or come between them, like they prevented him from truly reaching Anne.

Shame about his many defects, internal and external, visible and not, is purged from his mind under the warmth of Phineas's stare. In his arms and snug against his chest, where Phillip's father cannot touch him.

_Either of them_.

"Of course." Phineas nuzzles his nose against Phillip's in return, his smile genuine and at its most dazzling softened by relief, contentment, and love reciprocated. He pecks Phillip's lips and places a final soft kiss at the corner of Phillip's mouth. " _Always_."

It's a promise he cannot keep, but Phillip knows that the ever headstrong and obdurate man will damn well try.

They sleep cuddled on the couch in the office, Phillip fitting somehow perfectly into the curve of Phineas's chest, safe with strong arms wound around him and the heat of a body enveloping him under layers of knit blankets and threadbare quilts that would have to suffice, as both of them deemed the gas stove and oil lamp too much of a gamble.

Phillip is on the cusp of slumber, drowsy and soothed by the balm of Barnum Humbug on his heart, when he feels a hand sneak under the freed hem of his shirt, and pause on the rope of raised tissue it discovers there. Elevated land on a continent yet to be fully explored.

Ugly, worn, decaying land.

His heartbeat stutters, nauseous.

Phineas must have felt him tense, because he murmurs so gently that hot tears sting Phillip's eyes, "Oh, Phillip. You have no idea how strong you are. How achingly, _perfectly beautiful_." He peppers kisses on the back of Phillip's neck, at the fine hairs near the base of his skull, and down to the first vertebra of his spine, labor-tough fingers charting all the while.

Unflinching. Undaunted.

Not at all repelled by the lines of mountain ranges and pools of dark lakes they skim.

_Maybe it's because he can't  see them_ , Phillip reasons. But, Phineas nestling closer, hand settling over the pattering pulse at Phillip's center, applying another layer of salve with skin meeting skin, is testament beyond refutation that Phineas _can_ see. Has _always_ seen.

And, the possibility of rejection never crossed his mind.

"Do you believe that people are made of stardust, Phillip?" He asks, deep timbre rough as sleep draws its blanket over the two of them.

_Only you_ , Phillip thinks. _Only_ ** _you_** _would ever subscribe to such a peculiarly lovely, perfect…_ "I can't say that I do," he murmurs in reply. His eyelids fall, breath synchronizing with Phineas's without him willing it to. "Such fanciful imaginings are sadly beyond me."

Phineas shifts, his hold on Phillip tightening just perceptibly. Phillip hears and feels the smile as the showman, _his_ showman, partner, lifeboat, and sun, promises warmly, soft, painfully optimistic chuckle underscoring his words, "We'll make a dreamer of you, yet."

_Yet_. A word of possibility. Of dread. Of tragedy still to come and promises unfulfilled.

 Here, with this impossible, irrepressible man, all of the negative connotations of _yet_ are pebbles cast at a wrought-iron fortress.

Phillip covers the hand resting on his breast with one of his own, slipping his fingers into spaces where they, too, fit perfectly. Another shared breath fills the room, quiet and gentle.

The sound of coming home.

That night's sleep is the most restful either of them have had in weeks.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Awakening to an embarrassing patch of wet under his cheek is nothing new to Phillip, and he wipes swiftly, self-consciously, at his chin and the corner of his mouth, on reflex.

The scratch of wool, however, _is_ unfamiliar, as is the jade color of the material his face was resting against. And, the gentle puffs of breath on the back of his neck, arms wound tight around his midsection, and soft snores in his ear, are equally foreign.

But, not unwelcome.

He breathes in and is met with the familiar and _comforting_ scents of rich, redolent cologne, powdery laundry soap, whisky, stale peanuts, and _Phineas_.

For a moment, Phillip revels, lets all five of his senses absorb the input they're receiving. Just in case this is a dream that will slip through the cracks of his memory and into oblivion upon resurfacing in the waking world.

Then, the snores are cut off with a snuffle and a quiet grunt, and Phillip realizes that no dream would include such a minor, unerringly human and _real_ detail.

Smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth, amused to have woken before the perpetual- and boastful- early riser, Phillip murmurs, voice rasping with sleep, "Good morning."

"Good morning to _you_ ," Phineas replies, equally groggy. "Especially since I doubt you've seen many of them."

"Sleeping in is a luxury I've always been more than willing to take full advantage of. It's only a senseless man who rises before the sun."

"A senseless man, or an ambitious one?"

"I believe the two are synonymous."

Phineas's responding laughter warms Phillip to the tips of his toes. Even with the brisk early morning chill. It's hearty and mirthful and every bit the man that Phillip has fallen in love with.

Phineas pushes his nose into Phillip's hair, a contented sigh escaping him, and Phillip nestles back into the embrace, savoring the way he melds into the curve of Phineas's body, a firm chest pressed against his back, strong legs entangling with his own, and, for once, he is unfazed at the thought of a thin layer of cloth being the only thing cloaking and concealing his broken parts.

Then, without warning, the easy silence is disturbed as Phineas murmurs, "Phil, these scars…"

Phillip swallows, and is certain Phineas can feel the contraction of muscles in his neck, the tightening of tendons.

"How many of them are from the fire?" Phineas's tone is uncharacteristically careful, delicate. Mindful and considerate of Phillip's feelings.

The misery that made Phillip just as worthy of being brought out of the shadows as any other member of their family, that warranted Phineas seeking Phillip out and seducing him with promises of freedom and dreams and cures for all of his ails, must stem from somewhere, after all.

And, if there is one person on earth that Phillip can confide the shame of its true origin in, if it would ameliorate any persisting guilt regarding the injuries Phillip sustained in the fire that Phineas wrongly believes he could have prevented…

"Only a few. The rest… are from my father."

Phineas sucks in a shaky, staggered breath. "God damn that man."

Phillip doesn't believe that four words have ever been imbued with, drenched in, such dismay, anger, disbelief, and acquiescence.

Of course. Now it all makes sense. Now Phineas knows what fueled Phillip's discontent and reliance on drink, his clinging to flutes and flasks like an old friend and security blanket, his meagre and pathetic attempts at escapism through soulless, pandering plays.

And, with this knowledge no doubt comes--

 Phillip presses his face into Phineas's overcoat, longing to bury himself away in the material that smells of his partner, and perhaps smother himself in it, as well. "Don't pity me," he murmurs. "Please."

_I couldn't stand it._

"Pitying you would require you to be pitiful," Phineas answers softly. "And, Phillip, you are absolutely _not_."

Internally, Phillip recoils. Flinches away from the refutation as if it has scalded him. He wants to believe Phineas and the words that spill like spoonfuls of precious elixir from the tip of Phineas's silver tongue. But…

A flash of steely eyes. Words hissed at Phillip through bared teeth and thin, curdled lips.

_Pathetic. Disgrace. Wretch._

_Have you no_ **_shame_ ** _?_

Phantom pain lances through Phillip's back, tendrils spreading over every stark bolt of lightning incised into the expanse of flesh.

"A man as courageous as you," Phineas goes on, undeterred, conviction increasing in tandem with the intensity of his presence and his _stare_.

Hot and penetrating enough to seep warmth intravenous, flooding crannies and corridors barren, anemic, and bereft.

"As selfless and compassionate, heart untouched by the coldness and cruelty of the world he came from, as _breathtaking_ in every way… " Impossibly, which Phillip has come to learn means 'possible only for The World's Greatest Showman', Phineas manages to turn Phillip to face him, and the distance between them is so minimal, their noses are nearly touching, their breaths mingling, and Phillip's plane of vision is filled entirely by hazel eyes peering right into the heart of his walled-off soul. "Has nothing pitiful about him."

"How can you say that?" Phillip all but whispers, hoping to obscure the tremor in his voice, fight off the tears threatening to prick his eyes. "I spent most of my life being beaten by my father for the crime of--"

"What?" Phineas challenges, his volume never increasing, inflection still heartrendingly gentle. Paternal. As if speaking to one of his precious little daughters whom Phillip could not even attempt to fathom Phineas raising a hand against. Shouting at. Cursing the existence of.

_Ever_.

 But, it would be only a monster who seeks to harm either of the sweet, wide-eyed Barnum girls. A monster lacking in all humanity and capacity for love.

Phillip isn't an innocent child with untold possibilities and miles of uncharted road still ahead of him. He is a man, just shy of thirty, and _tainted_. Soiled by indiscretions and salacious proclivities. Tarred by the brush of scandal. His actions and desires more than justify the back of a hand delivering a stinging slap to his cheek, the mounted signet on his father's weighty ring biting at his raw skin, the terror and names and welts, contusions, ugly, ugly, ugly scars.

"What 'crime' could possibly warrant a man harming _his own child_?"

The abundance of shock, unsteadying outrage, and _grief_ in Phineas's voice makes Phillip long to avert his eyes. But, he can't. A force he cannot begin to name, stronger than gravity, keeps his gaze locked on, mind and heart enveloped in a sea of whisky and caramel thick and stormy, shimmering the harrowed green of maritime tumult.

"Did he tell you you were born 'wrong'?" Phineas implores. "Deceive you into believing that you're somehow 'defective' because you didn't meet his qualifications of what a man, what _his son_ , 'should be'?"

Phillip's jaw tightens, his heart sinking into the tempest swirling in his stomach.

"Phil." Hands ever so tender, Phineas wipes away the tears brimming on Phillip's lower lash line, and brushes his lips against the furrows in Phillip's brow.

Phillip inhales through his nose, and before he's fully realized it, he's burying his face in the crook of Phineas's neck, soaking in the soft scrape of stubble on his skin and the rhythm of the pulse beating strong at the hollow of Phineas's throat.

Phineas's arms encircle him, once more, without hesitation, large hands rubbing circles on Phillip's back.

It's physical comfort; an intimacy Phillip never knew that he craved so deeply, profusely, desperately.

He shivers into the touch as Phineas traces the column of his spine, fingertips like downy feathers on the scars they encounter.

"Your father lashing out at you in blind hatred, feeding you insidious, destructive lies, disowning you due to no failure on your part, but because of his own inability to love a person he couldn't mold to suit his demands… That makes you no different than anyone else here. And, would you say that any of us- Lettie, Anne, Charles, Chang and Eng, Walter, Vasily, even _me_ , with my ignoble upbringing- deserve to hate parts of ourselves simply because someone who doesn't understand, whose mind is closed and heart coagulated, took it upon themselves to decide that we were 'born wrong'?"

" _No_ ," Phillip answers immediately. Emphatically. "There's nothing wrong with any of you."

Phineas turns to, once again, meet Phillip's eyes. "Any of _us_ ," he amends. His features shine with the indomitable passion that makes him so alluring, draws crowds by the hundreds, single-handedly rekindled the fires of dreams all but extinguished, and coaxed galaxies of stars to burning, brilliant life. "There is nothing wrong with _any of us_."

Being part of this collective isn't assuming a station of perceived superiority over the "lesser", the "untouchables". It's accepting his place in the world with the family that he _chose_ , rather than the one forced to _settle_ with him.

It's enduring the scathing jeers, venom, and occasional acts of violence, for the sake of working, performing, and living alongside of the band of extraordinary people who redefined Phillip's notion of "family" existing outside of works of idealized fiction.

It's… letting Phineas Taylor Barnum, the man who brought him into this world so magnificently different and alive, who restored purpose to his life and filled it with joy immense beyond comprehension, accept him as he is. _Love_ him as he is. Even the malformed fragments and variegated pieces that Phillip cannot bring himself to feel anything other than shame for.

Phillip nudges closer, particles of his being vibrating against Phineas's, and rests his nose against the small bump of raised flesh on the apple of Phineas's cheek. A beauty mark as distinct to Phillip as Lettie's beard, Vasily's height, Walter's prevalence of hair, and the colorful ink adorning Constantine's skin.

A star just southeast of the twinkling Sirius that guided Phillip home.

"Thank you," he says, pulling back to regard the hazel of his pair of North Stars. His lighthouse beacon that pierces the densest melancholy fog.

What he means is, _I love you._

Phineas guides him into another kiss, and, when they break, the storm clouds shadowing Phillip's North Stars have cleared. "You, too," Phineas whispers like the words are something sacred.

And, they are.

_They are_.

Coffee is brewed, the smell of the grounds rejuvenating, anchoring. But, not nearly as much as Phineas's usual lighthearted teasing over Phillip's "dreary" preferences for his daily supply of caffeine. (Black. No milk, no cream, hardly any sugar. By contrast, Phineas may as well be drinking sweetened milk; a fact that Phillip is swift to remind him of, earning Phillip a rather flirtatious, "Having tried a bit of everything, I've found that I much prefer sweet things", accompanied by a slow, deliberate drag of Phineas's tongue over his stirring spoon, and his eyes fixing, intentionally, on Phillip.) Consequent warmth envelopes Phillip's chest, plush and luxurious as the material of a crimson ringmaster's coat, and trickles into his stomach, leaving him dazed and buoyant.

A morning without this banter is one that he wishes to never see.

If he and Phineas are standing too close to one another when the rest of the circus troupe begin to arrive, if their stares linger just a bit too long, hold a smidgen too much meaning, if easy smiles and still-rumpled clothing give something away, they know they face no danger.

They are among family, and members of outside strata possessing small minds and hearts colder than ice have no power, here.

 

 

_* * *_  

 

 

Grotesquely, _monstrously_ , even _Lettie_ , filled with love ample as her form and tremendous as her voice, has been cruelly marked by the world.

Phillip is made privy to this as the troupe prepares for that night's show.

Phineas has finished securing the knot on Phillip's cravat and is murmuring bounteous, stomach-fluttering praise against the shell of Phillip's ear ("Stunning. Perfect. Absolutely _magnificent_. The awe-inspiring moon to my sun."), large hands a warm, grounding weight on Phillip's shoulders through the plush of his ringmaster's coat, when the bearded woman announces, "You two really are too sweet," eliciting a blush that heats Phillip from his face to his neck.

"Darling Phillip deserves nothing less," Phineas answers with a grin, smoothing the fabric of the coat over Phillip's shoulders and lighting a kiss on the crown of his head.

Phillip playfully shoos him off, unable to stop the smile that unfurls on his face as he checks the state of his hair. Still neatly styled, strands held in place by a generous application of Macassar oil.

Phineas's own hair is as tidily arranged as it will ever be, dark curls sleek and glossy as a raven's plumage under the dressing area lights.

The golden accoutrements of his waistcoat flash and shine as the light plays off of them, and Phillip could not imagine a world, _any_ world, where this ridiculous fop and peacock of a man is never again proudly clad in the costumed attire that prances, swirls, saunters, and swans its way into Phillip's most daring and risque fantasies.

"Be careful who you show that sweetness to," Constantine contributes. His deft fingers skillfully weave flowers into Lettie's hair, pausing ever-so briefly to part the thick masses of curls with gentle combing motions.

"I can assure you, we take the clandestine nature of our partnership _very_ seriously." Phineas reclaims his position at Phillip's side, his proximity and the tilt to his chin unremitting; the glint in his eye protective in a way that the senior Carlyles never were, and, Phillip quietly concedes, _never will be_.

"I wish you wouldn't have to." Lettie sighs, seemingly down to the soles of her feet. "But the Lord above knows how ugly the world can be."

Phillip senses that there is more to be told, and even Phineas remains silent, signaling Lettie to continue with a subtle movement of his head.

Constantine's hand stills. "Lettie."

"It's okay, Con." Voice soft, subdued and timorous as Phineas informed Phillip Lettie, herself, was before he persuaded her to step out of the shadows of her old life spent hidden behind rows of linen in a washroom, Lettie shares, "My mother hated my beard. From the moment the hairs first started to grow, I could see the change in her. Her eyes were hard. Angry. Disgusted by her daughter who wasn't a ' _real_ girl', in her eyes, and never would be, as long as the broken pieces of me were out on display."

Hearing the word he has used so often, automatically, to describe himself, employed as a descriptor for someone else, for a person as fiercely loving as _Lettie_ , Phillip's heart is seized by a terrible ache and plummets into his stomach, crashing with enough force to bottom the organ out.

"She decided to try to fix what didn't need fixing."

Phineas shifts closer to Phillip, his mouth opening, searching for words. "You--"

"She cut you. Didn't she?" Phillip despises the question, the very idea of it, as it leaves his mouth, every syllable a punch to the gut, a blade hacking chinks out of his healing and painstakingly fortified heart.

It's utterly _appalling_ ; a mother willingly harming her own daughter, a parent striking and denouncing, _disgusted_ by their own child.

But, no longer surprising to him.

He isn't the only one who will never be good enough to please the people who birthed him into a world where he does not belong.

Lettie's unflinching silence is confirmation.

Constantine has frozen in place, a soft exhale the only indicator that the tattooed man has not been replaced by an intricately painted statue.

Phillip feels Phineas's hand at his shoulder, a tether keeping Phillip close to the shore, safe as a gale begins to rile the once peaceful waters of their cove. He holds tight to this touch even as Phineas moves to kneel before Lettie, taking one of her hands into his own.

Images of a razor slicing Lettie's face, blood red as the stain on her lips and blush on her cheeks welling, dripping, horror, sadness, and _pain_ spilling out of wide, newness-drained brown eyes, are beaten back by the affection and security in the soothing, unwavering, familiar, _safe_ lilting low notes of Phineas's voice.

"I'm glad that you know how wrong she was. That there is nothing about you that needs to be 'fixed'."

Lettie holds Phineas's stare, her gaze shining and posture confident. Self-assured. Open as the unfurled petals of a lily in full bloom; a far cry from the woman who hid behind curtains and shied away from eye-contact with all but children whose hearts were still open and accepting and blind to "flaws" that adults refused to see past.

"There is nothing wrong with you," Phillip echoes softly. Then, with more power, "With _any of us_."

Pink and purple entering his peripheral alerts him to Anne, who has slipped silently, unnoticed until now, into the dressing area. Her cinnamon eyes swim with a mixture of emotion. She meets Phillip's eyes, offers him the softest smile that he easily, naturally, returns, and crosses to Lettie.

Phineas rises to his feet, stepping aside to clear a path for her.

The swirls of Anne's candy wig and the rhinestones decorating the mesh sections of her violet leotard glow, possessing a luminescence all their own, as Anne wraps her arms about Lettie in a tight hug.

Lettie inhales, surprised, before lifting her arms and hugging Anne just as tightly, in return. Her smile, full, honest, and happy, with herself, with her life, and with the love surrounding her, abates the storm.

 

 

_* * *_

 

 

Phineas assembled this collection of pariahs. Of social lepers and outcasts rejected by the world and condemned to lives of poverty, homelessness, shame, isolation, and unbearable _loneliness_ before he called to them. 

Phineas is attracted to broken people. Misplaced and aching people. Because he sees a piece of himself in them. Because he, too, was abandoned, looked down upon and castigated, left with a gnawing ache in his bones that he would spend nearly half of his life trying to satisfy.

 Because he understands. Because his mind is miles of open land and sea and his heart is warm and vast, fathomless, a muscle sculpted and profuse with love to spare.

Phillip relays this observation to him, adding, assuring, "It's one of the reasons I love you so much," as he kisses the line of dark hair trailing below Phineas's navel and down the valley that dips between his legs.

The scent of sex is strong, cloying on the air as Phillip descends lower. He lavishes care on powerful, scarred thighs, brushing his lips over every phantom of a stone cast, tracing stripes of labor-marked and weathered flesh with his tongue, and relishing in the breathy sigh this earns him, the flexing of strong, rippling muscle under his mouth.

"You're so beautiful, Phillip," Phineas says. Leaning against his desk, pants and trousers pooling around his ankles, he guides Phillip back up to him, strokes through Phillip's hair and along his left sideburn, kisses his chin and tells him, eyes honey, soft and golden and thick with affection, "Every attempt the world made to break you has only made you stronger, and even more breathtaking. And," he adds as he lifts Phillip's right hand to eye-level and runs his thumb over angry lines permanently etched into Phillip's knuckles, "these marks on your skin are proof of it. Be they from the fire, _or_ your father." He presses a kiss to Phillip's fingertips, soft and tender, before turning the hand palm upward and brushing his lips over the inlet of the blue river that forms at its heel.

Phillip's pulse tingles, the life it holds pronounced and undeniable under Phineas's lips, and Phillip forces a laugh to conceal the urge to cry.

Phineas sees through the facade, as he always has and always will, and only smiles, drawing Phillip into another long, lingering kiss.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Does this mean we have _two_ daddies, now?"

" _Hel_ -en," Caroline gently chides her younger sister. But, it's only half-hearted, and it sparks indulgent chuckles from all three of the adults in the room.

Although both Barnum girls are composed of the soft, willowy lines of their mother, the boundless prospects and unhampered idealism that glow blindingly bright in their eyes is their father through and through.

Charity Barnum is as unable to deny this precious optimism and unending supply of fantastic dreams as Phillip, himself.

"Whatever it is, as long as we do it together…" She had told Phineas the night after _the kiss_ \- healing and life-affirming and so incredibly, profoundly wonderful in every way- her hand resting assuringly on his cheek, cupping to cradle his face as she had so many times throughout their lifetime-spanning relationship.

Thus, the very next day, hand-in-hand with his wife, unified partners forever and always, Phineas had coaxed Phillip forward, baritone low and soothing, hand outstretched.

Timidly, every nerve on-edge, dread and fear battering his heart, conjuring a swirling cyclone in his stomach, blaring in his skull, Phillip tensed his jaw and stepped forward, entwining his fingers with Phineas's,

Reflexively, he began to shrink in on himself, eyes lowering, posture quailing. If he could make himself small, if he could curl inward, shield as many vulnerable areas as possible…

 A squeeze at his hand brought this succession of thoughts to a halt.

He raised his eyes to meet encouraging hazel, and reminded himself that Phineas would never bring him before Charity if there was even the slightest inkling that--

Another hand, much smaller and softer, took hold of Phillip's.

His heart lurched, stammered, caught in his airway.

"You know you always have a place here," Charity had said. Her thumb was soft as it brushed the callus on the inside of Phillip's second finger. Her touch gentle and comforting as she, too, unflinchingly acknowledged Phillip's scars, brown eyes warm, voice unfaltering. "You're _family_ , Phillip."

Never had Phillip seen such forgiveness, acceptance, _kindness_ from a member of the upperclass. It struck something at his very core. A bolt of lightning tearing through him, leaving a gaping lesion in its wake. A shaken bottle uncorked, mouth open and exposed for his quickly carbonating emotions to gush out of in a terrible, unrelenting spume.

Charity, perceptive, insightful, blessed and ever unselfish of heart Charity, also _understood_. And, so, she had sat with both men, that night, reading poetry and conversing over cups of peppermint tea. She shared the story of how Phineas, then a handsome and daring boy who refused to let silly old rules dictate how he should behave around a proper and moneyed- and horribly _stringent_ \- client's daughter, fashioned a tea cup out of knickknacks and spoiled her etiquette lessons by making her laugh so hard, she spit tea all over the table she was seated at.

Her father didn't take kindly to this blatant sabotage of his daughter's decorous upbringing, and made a point to both punish Phineas for his audacity (Phineas was nothing but an "insignificant tailor's boy", after all, and had no business engaging with the esteemed Halletts' daughter), and severely upbraid Charity before sending her away to finishing school.

At that moment, seated across from her and beside her lifelong partner, Phillip felt a kinship with Charity Barnum that he never imagined he could. That he never imagined he would _deserve_ to, harboring such indecent and immoral feelings for her husband.

He knew that Charity had fled the nest, driven by love and the heedless boldness of heart it inspires, to venture into unknown territory with nothing but a suitcase of material possessions, the clothes on her back, and the man she loved at her side. And, while this decision left her name mired in a notoriety that only her husband could outmatch, Phillip secretly, in the parts of him still somehow fluttering with the faintest pulses of life, yearned for such bravery. Purpose. For a love grand, poignant, earthmoving, and immense enough to sweep him out of his immurement of whisky and malaise and bars of an ivory cage wrapped tight and asphyxiating around his neck.

He never dared hope for any sort of camaraderie with the woman he sometimes wished that he could be.

Until…

One hand curling around Phineas's, and the other setting her cup aside with the smallest clink of china, Charity said, "When a person doesn't concern themselves with meaningless things like titles, labels, and stations, it's remarkably easy to fall in love with someone simply because they make you laugh, or inspire you." She gazed, then, at Phineas, a soft, adoring smile on her lips that he reciprocated tenfold, face alight with his lopsided grin.

The grin that replenished the bitter wine that spills out of Phillip, gradually and assiduously reformulating it into something sweeter, although Phineas insists that the sweetness has always been there and merely needed a "helping hand" to be brought to the surface.

The grin that was the catalyst for everything.

That ensnared Phillip the instant he first saw it gleaming under the street lamps.

"The things that make a person different, or unfit for love in the eyes of certain parts of the world, are still there, and always will be, and you begin to see the stories behind them. The hardships the person endured, the features that make them unique--"

"A characteristic that some people daftly choose to devalue," Phineas interjected, lingering disdain for this daftness audible in his voice and palpable in the roll of his eyes.

"-- and, those people aren't worth paying any mind." With another indulgent smile and a squeeze at Phineas's hand to hush him, Charity continued, "Because these 'characteristics', aren't flaws, but the parts of a person most deserving of love. And," brown eyes fixing on Phillip, she finished meaningfully, with utmost certainty, "they're the parts that bring the most love out of _you_ , if you're willing to accept them, and help the person you love come to accept them, as well."

Phillip had swallowed, the peppermint clinging to his tongue sweet, and his core warmed through, as if he were kneeling before a hearth and became enveloped in the gentle winding tendrils and comforting orange glow that emanated from within.

This sensation, of welcome, love, and wholehearted acceptance, is what he feels now as he tries to decline the notion of him being a "second father" without completely discouraging the two little girls regarding him with such heart-clenching adoration and _hope_.

What a _monster_ he genuinely would be to dash that hope.

But, him… A _father_?

Raised in a household where the only parenting tactics he was exposed to were restraint, suppression, suffocation, adherence to "virtue" at the cost of free-will, and the strictest of consequences for any failure or disobedience, no matter how trifling.

_Him_. Molded by resentment, bred into arrogance, hauteur, and austerity. Blood acetic, bones brittle, insides an anesthetized tundra fraught with fractures, fissures, and innumerable jagged edges.

Phillip with his tongue barbed and heart sealed away behind rows of razor-sharp spines ready to injure any who tread too near.

Erinaceid spines all too keen to spear, skewer, and rend.

Even and especially Phillip, himself.

"I don't see why not," Phineas says simply.

Phillip turns toward him, eyes wide and _just_ stopping himself from gaping.

"You don't need to be of blood relation to be a parent," Charity adds, speaking as plainly and casually as if she were informing them of the number of stripes on a tiger, or the scientific name of the horns atop a giraffe's head.

(Over one-hundred, and ossicones, respectively. As has been helpfully relayed to Phillip time and again by his acutely enthusiastic self-proclaimed zoologist partner.)

Phillip attempts to maintain at least _some_ vestige of good sense in the face of such absurdity. Can't they see? _Someone_ must see the danger he poses. "With all due respect, you girls already _have_ two exceptional parents, and aren't in any need of--"

Phineas expeditiously slips an arm around Phillip's shoulders, tucking him into his side. "I'm sure you would love to learn of the trials, travails, and triumphant adventures of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Odysseus. Wouldn't you, girls?"

Frustrated and bemused- the most ardent detractor of plays he knows, advertising them to his own daughters? Pigs must be sprouting wings and carving aerial figure-eights above the ice-coated pits of Hell- Phillip finds his tongue working itself into a tangled mess of knots.

His attention is diverted from the nerve-gratingly sanguine ringmaster as Caroline's voice, soft and demure, the coo of a shyly entreating dove, inquires, "You would teach me French, wouldn't you, Phillip?" 

"And, give me more piggy-back rides?"

Phillip glances from one Barnum daughter to the other, his gaze met unwaveringly by two sets of eyes. One brown. One blue. Both equally wide and earnest.

He swallows, his jaw clenching, and his resistance crumbling away.

He can't deny them. Good God, how could he?

But, he's completely unfit for this role. Inadequate and unqualified- and far too _ruined_ \- to raise and nurture and--

A small hand, scarcely more than bird bones and soft skin, rests on his own. "We'd really love it if you read us bedtime stories and helped tuck us in every night," Helen says, prosody tinkling wind chimes and silvery notes from a sweet little bell.

Phillip's throat tightens. His heart expands, swells of love radiating outward and engulfing his core, slipping into the fissures and empty spaces and filling in the serrated cracks behind his ribs more effectively than drink ever has. "Would you?" He all but whispers.

"Of course!" Caroline smiles, so much like her father, exuberance illuminating the whole of her face. "You tell the _best_ stories, Phillip."

Phineas emits a gasp of feigned offense, lifting a hand to clutch at his chest in mock-injury. "Better than _mine_?"

The girls simply giggle, and Phillip feels a smile, faint but honest and felt in the very fibres of him, slowly but surely unfurling on his mouth.

Falling head over heels, madly, foolishly, perilously in love with Phineas Taylor Barnum, was an inevitability. One more sentimental and naively romantic of heart than Phillip, himself, might even go so far as to call it "destined".

Never, _never_ did Phillip expect that he would come to love every member of the Barnum family. Sensible Charity and the brilliant balls of spirit and joy that are Caroline and Helen, as well as impractical and ostentatious and dazzlingly, breathtakingly beautiful and ambitious Phineas. All of whom have inexplicably, implicitly trusted him from the moment they were introduced… and never paid any mind to his broken, deviant, malformed parts.

He lets himself think, _This is_ ** _family._** _This is_ ** _my family_** _._ Then, he lifts a hand to Helen's head, gently, so gently, threads his fingers into golden curls, and is nearly bowled over as Helen throws her arms around him, pressing her ebullient laughter into his waistcoat and tipping her head up to regard him with unbridled, unapologetic _love_.

A kiss is brushed against and a nose nuzzles into his hair, Phineas's hold on him tightening, drawing him in impossibly closer, and Phillip knows that the only answer he could ever give is, "Absolutely. Always", adding with a conspiratorial, mutinous smirk, "We can't let your father depose me as your favorite raconteur."

The euphoric squeals as a second pair of slender arms wraps around him, the tender chestnut glow in Charity's eyes, the warm, robust vibrations of hearty laughter rumbling in the barrel of Phineas's broad, sturdy chest, are proof all around Phillip, surrounding and swathing and embracing him, that each and every one of these special people loves him, too. Intensely. Tremendously. With a totality that doesn't seem real, but _is_ , all the same.

And, are all too happy to welcome him into their home and safe haven; another oasis of color, bastion of vitality, shelter for diversity and dreams, and endless repository of inspiring, comforting, supportive, emboldening _acceptance_ , of P.T. Barnum's design.

 

 

* * *

 

 

A breath of wingbeats fluttering against his ribs, the lining of his lungs, the arc of his diaphragm, Phillip releases his hold on his shirt and allows the garment to slide over his arms, biceps, forearms, wrists, onto the floor, landing in a heap with a soft _shfth_.

The wingbeats still. And, Phillip likewise remains motionless, cords in his throat drawn taut.

A caesura is sustained for one heartbeat. Two.

Phineas moves forward, and Phillip wills every atom of his makeup not to flinch as the pad of a callused finger comes into contact with his skin.

Bare. Exposed. Vulnerable. Ugliness on full display in a way that it hasn't been since the last time his father--

The finger, impossibly soft even with the faint scrape of roughened skin on deadened tissue, begins to trace a path along the margin of Phillip's right shoulder blade. "The Belt of Orion," Phineas says. He breathes a musical essence into the words. Into Phillip and his multitude of scars, as he recites, almost singsong, finger marking out, _sketching_ , "Ursa Minor. Leo… Dragon's Head… Pole of the Ecliptick…"

"What are you doing?" Phillip asks at last, body thrumming, skin tingling, every pore alight. The wingbeats resume, their rhythm frenzied and frantic.

"Skin is a canvas. With a bit of imagination, we can transform it into anything we desire. Not by concealing, but by employing a change of perspective, and redefining."

Phillip feels his eyebrows rise. Curious. Expectant.

"So… " Phineas's splayed fingers slide into interstices, hands skimming over the ripples of muscle in Phillip's abdomen. "Your back is a sky," he whispers into Phillip's neck, the tip of his nose grazing the shell of Phillip's ear, his long digits tickling and titillating as they explore the ridges of Phillip's hips, the tail ends of scars that just started to creep toward Phillip's front, and the section of burnt flesh on Phillip's left pectoral. "And I'm connecting the configurations of stars."

"People are made of stardust?" The question is soft, lacking any dryness, bite, barb, or splinters of bitter, deeply-ingrained disenchantment. Phillip shivers and believes that he's starting to understand.

 Stardust is everlasting. Even when a star burns itself out, collapses inward and implodes, self-destructs violently and spectacularly, it never truly dies. Pieces of it persist, float about the vast universe waiting to reform into something new, brighter and bolder and even worldly. _Human_.

Phineas grins, recently-shaved face just the right amount of scratchy. Bare chest and arms melding into Phillip as they encircle him. Warmth and sturdiness and strength and radiance everything Phillip could ever need. His own star of flesh, blood, and bone. "Exactly."

 

 

* * *

 

 

W.D. Wheeler's bright (albeit upside down) grin is the first thing Phillip's swimming vision hones in on through a tossed-up cloud of sand as his thrown-off axes reorient.

"You're too top-heavy for that part of the act, Carlyle. You might want to work on building your leg muscle before you try it again."

Anne rolls her eyes and offers Phillip a hand that he gratefully takes, "Don't listen to him," she says, tugging him upright in a single fluid motion. Forever and always staggeringly graceful, and stronger than anyone outside of these tents could imagine. "He's posturing."

Suppressing a wince at the smarting in his lower back- that fall off the Lyra is certain to leave a bruise, and the stiffness to Phillip's movements, tomorrow, is bound to catch the attention of his damnably perceptive partner- Phillip sends up a prayer of thanks to whatever God was clement enough to ensure that the otherwise stoic and reserved W.D. only feels a need to "posture" around Phillip.

The circus couldn't possibly handle _two_ flamboyantly costumed peacocks strutting about in efforts to assert their dominance. One is _more_ than enough.

Never mind that said outrageous, overdressed peacock has an ego and ambition and enormousness of presence that could eclipse _any_ challenger to his crown and throne.

The siblings send each other a look, silent communion achieved only by an intimate understanding of one another's minds, and Phillip spies a quirk- amused without any hint of animosity- at the corner of W.D.'s mouth.

Hand still holding Phillip's, Anne turns away from her brother and rubs the bruised section of Phillip's palm with her thumb. "You're learning and improving," she says. She smiles softly, affectionate, encouraging, and _proud_. Dynamics have shifted. Phillip has become Anne's protégé where he was once Phineas's; still learning, still growing. Perspective always broadening and changing.

"And, that's what matters," Anne tells him. Everything about her teems with a sense of ease and utmost certainty.

Epiphany illuminating, Phillip realizes that he agrees.

He and the rest of the troupe, Phineas and Charity included, are palimpsests. Steadily rewriting and revising themselves, weaving a stronger narrative from the earlier crumpled, scratched, and smudged out (though never truly expunged) passages, and perhaps even volumes, of their lives.

"None of us should have been hurt," Anne tells Phillip, later, as they leave the theater arm in arm, together ignoring the stones cast.

The opera they saw was admittedly morbid, ending in a death, and Phillip almost regrets buying tickets to this particular show. But, watching Anne's eyes light up, the smile on her face as she took a seat in the house, not sequestered off or isolated, but among everyone else, as she always should have been, was worth the wailing as a character onstage met her grisly demise.

"But, it's strengthened us. Gave all of us something to stand up for, and reason to defy the world and love each other, and ourselves, that much more."

Anne, dear Anne, is beautiful and fearless, and _wise_ , exactly who she is meant to be. And, the parts of Phillip that protest, kick and stamp and scream that he is still undeserving of loving himself, are quieted as he tightens his hold on Anne, shifting closer and agreeing: _We are glorious._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Phineas's mouth on Phillip's skin is craved, cherished, _needed_ as acutely and passionately as his touch.

Lips on Phillip's, crashing against them, punctuating and enhancing with laving tongue and softly stinging bites. On Phillip's neck, nipping, sucking, marking. On his collarbone, chest, navel, and the hollow of his hips and his thighs and his--

Oh. _Oh_.

Phillip's hands immediately, instinctively, find Phineas's head and bury themselves in dark, messy waves.

" _Gorgeous_ ," Phineas whispers, hot and wet on Phillip's frighteningly sensitive flesh. " _Darling_. _Oh,_ ** _my_** **_darling_**."

Phillip is overcome by a fierce, towering wave of wholeness and love and grabs and quivers and loses all sense of where he ends and Phineas begins, nerves and sensation and being connected inextricably.

He only faintly registers the ground falling away, hands cupping the globes of his rear and moving to secure a hold under his thighs and around his back as the kiss continues, Phillip looping his arms around Phineas's neck and spreading his legs, pressing their bodies flush and urgent together.

A short whine escapes him as he's deposited onto the vast bed in the master bedroom of the Barnum home- now _his_ home, as well. Distance between him and Phineas is unnatural, and he pants and reaches, mere pinpricks of mortification remaining.

_"Have you no_ **_shame_ ** _?"_

No. Not here. Not now. Not with Phineas's tongue filling his mouth and his hands dipping into the waistband of Phillip's pants and working them smoothly, easily, expertly down his legs.

Phineas who sees him, _all_ of him, and still thinks he's beautiful.

It's _zweisamkeit_ , as Phineas had called it, when Phineas rejoins him. Eros and Phileo as upper bodies of firm, sculpted muscle, rivaling Adonis and Michelangelo's David, meet, heavy and peppered with hair. Phillip kisses a tendon in Phineas's neck, suckles at the point where his pulse pumps, strong and fast and incredibly, intensely perfect, drawing a moan directly out of Phineas's chest.

Low, thrumming as it transmits along the connective tissue between them, adding kindle to the fire in Phillip's core. A nebula expanding, hot and molten and pooling between his legs. An unending sea and cosmos of _want_ spanning for millions of miles inside of him.

"I'm ready," Phillip says, breathless, taken, voice teetering on the edge of becoming a mewl. "I'm ready, Phin. _Please_ , I need you."

Phineas chuckles, breath just as taken, and presses a kiss to Phillip's forehead. "You are a marvel, Phillip Carlyle." His eyes soften, honey dripping from the comb, and smolder, the burn of whisky spilling and flowing down the throat. "And, one of the best decisions I've ever made."

With a last kiss, full of awe, wonder, and desire on both ends, Phineas pulls back, paying the noise of indignant protest that slips out of Phillip's throat as Phillip chases his mouth no regard, and swings his legs over the side of the bed.

Flustered, building desire protesting its lack of fulfillment, Phillip admonishes, "You have twenty seconds, Barnum. Starting now."

Phineas leans in to press a quick, teasing kiss on Phillip's cheek, and flashes him an infuriatingly impish grin. "Be back in fifteen, and not a single second over."

Phillip just manages not to huff out loud as Phineas throws him a playful wink over his shoulder and hurries from the room.

Within fifteen and a half seconds precisely, Phineas has returned, and he settles between Phillip's legs. He makes a prolonged show of removing the lid of and dipping dextrous fingers into a jar of petroleum jelly. But, soon enough, Phillip is the focus of his undivided attention, and he's slathering, and slicking, and--

One digit. Two. Index finger, then middle, up to the knuckle.

Inch by inch, Phillip takes Phineas; three fingers, then… _all of him_. Accepts him earnestly, full and hard and _so much_ , rapture swelling inside of him in cosmos-quaking waves as their bodies nest together, once more, contours aligning neatly and perfectly as matching pieces of a grand puzzle.

" _God_ ," Phillip breathes out reverently, staring up into hazel eyes darkened by want. _Need_ nearly as frantic and encompassing as his own.

Phineas kisses the pockmark on his forehead, between his brows, his lips. Pauses to ask, "Does it hurt?"

Exquisitely. A beautiful pain; surrender and submission that makes up for, burns away every attempt his father made to break him.

Because it's on Phillip's terms. Because Phillip _wants_ it.

"No," Phillip answers.

Only then does Phineas proceed.

For P.T. Barnum, owning Phillip has never, _never_ entailed harming him.

You don't jeopardize your own life, something neither one of Phillip's parents were willing to do for him- risking their reputations would have been asking too much- to save someone or something you intend to destroy.

Pads of fingers press hard, and nails dig into skin as hips meet over and over. Nipping teeth and the suction of lips leave loving bruises.

"Deeper," Phillip begs in a voice so husky, torn, and teeming with want, he barely recognizes it as his own. He winds his legs around Phineas, caging him, wanting him as close as layers of epidermal tissue will allow, heels resting insistent on the small of his back. "Phineas, please… Fast-- h-harder… Yes. _Yes_. Ohh, God. _Please_. _Claim me._ "

A deep groan reverberates in the cavity of Phineas's chest. He growls, his hold on Phillip's hips firmer, desperate, and graciously quickens his pace, pushing in as deep as Phillip's body will permit him.

Cries of pleasure leave Phillip's mouth uninhibited, _"l-like that, right_ ** _there_** , _ohhh_ ** _,_** _so good,_ _Ph_ - ** _Phin_** _…!"_ , and the bed springs squeak underneath of them.

Phillip feels fire ravaging his insides and blazing behind his eyes as Phineas strokes against a particular spot tucked within him over and over and over, again, again, again, coaxing, stoking, feeding. Fire swallowing him and Phineas, Phineas, Phin… Phin… Phin-- _fuck_. And, he knows, as Phineas streams praise, between pants and laced with lurid notes- "Christ, you feel so good, Phillip. So good, so perfect for me. Stunning and magnificent underneath me, s- _so_ \-- So hot around me, so incredi-- _fuck_. Fuck, God, _look at you_ , you're taking me. Every piece, every-- Phillip. _Phil_. My darling, my good boy, my perfect, _perfect Phillip_ "- that these are the flames of rebirth.

An ascending phoenix spreading golden wings. A star being born where a black hole of empty space once resided.

The Little Death seizes Phillip, sends him shuddering into climax with tears in his eyes and his heart spilling over, gushing torrents of love, ecstasy, love, love, _love_. One hand buried in thick, messy curls, the other clenching muscle atop an angular shoulder blade, he shouts Phineas's name in a broken whine, and is met with a sharp, equally ruined moan.

Then, Phineas is rutting into him, taken by The Little Death, as well, and plunging, filling, infiltrating and making a home for himself inside Phillip's veins, blood, lungs, and every crevice and cavity of his heart.

The home he was always meant to have. Sat vacant, waiting for him as long as Phillip can remember.

Fervent and tender kisses are pressed as they descend from the blissful high, littered over noses, cheeks, jaws, the crooks of necks. _I love you_ s are whispered like prayers into marked skin.

Phillip tastes the salt of his own tears and the warmth of Phineas's mouth, blessed and _everything_ , and feels the least broken he ever has in all his life.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

"You have freckles on your back."

The observation, relayed so casually in Phineas's low, mellifluous baritone, stirs Phillip from his comfortable half-asleep state.

They're lying in repose atop an old blanket on the shoreline behind the Barnum home. Taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to "sunbathe", at Phineas's behest.

"You could use some sun, Phil. It will be good for you. Why, it might even brighten your mood."

Ignoring the truly terrible, grimace-worthy pun, Phillip had agreed. On the grounds that Phineas and only Phineas see him half-clothed in the harsh, unforgiving light of day.

He may not view his scars as a weakness, or a shame, or reminders of his shortcomings and failures forever branded to his skin, anymore, but he's still not ready for everyone to see these parts of him.

"In time," Phineas had promised, hands cupped around Phillip's face and thumbs stroking Phillip's cheeks. "All in due time. You'll be ready. You'll get there."

"And, if I don't?" Phillip had challenged. Preemptively. Defensively. A cobra's bite with no venom that hardly broke the skin.

"Then," Phineas said, eyes sparking with anything and everything but pity, "you don't owe the world anything."

"Do I?" Phillip drawls, slow, lazy cadence obscuring the anxious pins and needles pricking along his nerves.

_It's_ ** _Phineas_** , he has to remind himself. His absurd and ridiculous head-in-the-clouds-and-preoccupied-by-so-many-superlunary-things, yet somehow capable of making more sense than anyone with their feet firmly, implacably rooted to the ground that Phillip has ever known, partner.

_Phineas_ , who couldn't be further from Mr. Carlyle if they were situated at opposite ends of the universe.

Phineas hums an affirmative, and before Phillip has time to flinch away- as he has been taught, conditioned, forced to commit to muscle memory because self-preservation is the brain and the body's most base, primal instinct that overrides even a sick desire for punishment- Phineas's lips are a warm brush of down on his skin. "Vela. Puppis." Phineas marks both freckles, constellations, with a kiss, finishing at, "Pyxis. The mariner's compass."

Located directly over Phillip's heart.

Phillip is still for a moment, hyperaware of his every pore and follicle tingling, of the sensation reaching and taking root and sprouting, budding, blossoming in his center, A garden of roses and myosotis and daffodils, crocuses and hydrangeas and birds of paradise and morning glories. All planted and carefully, lovingly tended to by Phineas. His Phineas.

His compass, map, star chart, index, starting point, destination, _home_.

He then shifts, tangles his fingers in beautifully windswept and ruffled curls, and takes Phineas's mouth with his own, their synchronized bodies singing _herzblut_ , _habseligkeiten_ , _omnia aim feint quae posse negabam_ , and _as astra per aspera_.

Heart's blood. Blessed possession. _"Everything which I used to say could not happen, will happen now."_

And, perhaps most important, _"To the stars through difficulties."_

For they, Phillip, Phineas, and every member of their unorthodox and extraordinary family, are transcendent, stardust, unwaveringly, enduringly _human_. And, it is their humanity that allows them to heal, skin to reknit, bones to mend, minds to overcome traumas and fault lines and internal battlegrounds. To progress step by step until no walls could ever stand in their way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Erinaceid spines is a reference to the Hedgehog's dilemma: " _A metaphor about the challenges of human intimacy. It describes a situation in which a group of hedgehogs seek to move close to one another to share heat during cold weather. They must remain apart, however, as they cannot avoid hurting one another with their sharp spines. Though they all share the intention of a close reciprocal relationship, this may not occur, for reasons they cannot avoid_ ".
> 
> And, _zweisamkeit_ is a German word defined as: "twoliness", or "togetherness". 
> 
>  
> 
> \--
> 
> I cannot possibly post this without extending my deepest and sincerest gratitude to my muse for keeping me driven, to every single person who left a kudos, or took the time out of their lives to type up a comment for any of the previous installments, and especially to [Schizanthus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schizanthus/pseuds/Schizanthus) and [The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting/pseuds/The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting). 
> 
> Your support motivated me through the worst of my own plunges into self-defeat and melancholia, and it is no exaggeration to say that I could not do this without you. Thank you for reading, and thank you ever so very, very much for being here. 
> 
> I have more stories planned for our circus dads that, hopefully, won't take another eternity and a half to share with all of you. Until then, take care of yourselves and have faith in your own strength to grow, to recover, and to overcome every obstacle on your path to your dreams. Because you, too, are made of stardust. ❤


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